


Quickening

by OurLadyOf



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Asheville, F/M, Family Secrets, Mountains, Mutual Pining, North Carolina, Pregnancy, Secrets, Strangers to Lovers, Surrogacy, Team as Family, Therapy, background Philinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-09-06 17:57:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16837573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OurLadyOf/pseuds/OurLadyOf
Summary: Jemma Simmons is just trying to get through a big family favor and finish her degree. Fitz is just trying to make it through the next year or so without losing his mind completely.The universe practices a weird and deliberate kind of magic in the Blue Ridge Mountains.





	1. Chapter 1

In the spring, Asheville is a different sort of place. Kinder, it is slower and more beautiful than what most have come to know of it in the Autumn months when the leaves chance and anyone there becomes just one person among millions. The mountains are a rich fertile green in the Spring, which is fitting, she thinks, given the metaphor of it all. Instead of the perky warm colors that she is used to seeing decorate the mountains, the enveloping feel is all algae, like the floor of a deep pond. She knows thinking of it in that manner is not a romantic analogy, but there is a type of romance in truth that she cannot deny, and besides, there is nothing prettier, or cheaper, than an exhausted cliche. When she considers her classwork, she finds the beauty in it anyway. That green is the color of insides and moss, the color of life at its most base. One must find beauty in it.

The air is fresh with the taste of honeysuckle, strange since she hasn’t seen a single bush of it since she arrived. Even Phil calls it a mystery of nature, not even his neighbors plant it in their yards on the outskirts of downtown. He loves it,but she isn’t sure she agrees. Jemma isn’t sure if the cause is that she doesn’t like the flower at all or if it’s just that she’s running late and feels ill and can only taste the metallic reminder that she should have left fifteen minutes earlier than she did.

As she thuds along toward the map kiosk that she is lucky enough to see on the corner, she arrives to another piece of practical technology that has been scribbled on with opaque spray paint, completely obscuring the names of the roads and the one particular road that she has been looking for the last fifteen minutes. As she studies and hopes to get the smallest glimpse of a clue as to where to go next, the wafting smell of noodles and funnel cakes arrive from opposite directions and assault the senses in different ways. She could use something sugary, but the soy sauce smell coming from the shop behind her is overwhelmingly sour. Jemma takes a deep breath and breaks away from the map to focus on keeping down her breakfast, because it was disgusting on the way down, so she can only guess how it would taste on the way back up. If she hadn’t made the mistake of forgetting her damn mobile in her room, she could have called someone to come get her or at least used her GPS to find her way.

Around her, people pace in their too-shiny shoes that squeak when they turn the corners of the gridded streets and hurry off to another meeting and the next business lunch. She must look a mess next to them in their smart suits. She frowns. 

“Excuse me, sir?” She taps an older man on the shoulder, but despite what they say about people being more polite in the Southern states, he moves forward and she hears him clear his throat into his phone.

The second man trods heavily, leaning forward in his scuffed shoes and carrying a bag of food in his hand. His curly hair is slightly askew, almost windblown under the cooking sun and the force of air-resistance that meets him. He’s moving quickly, but not too much that she can’t keep up and she pulls up the hem of her sundress just a few inches to jog. 

“Hi, sorry, I’m looking for a restaurant.” As she meets him, she is startled by the smell of soap that lingers on his clothing and the scent of sweat that has budded on his skin. He must have been running, she thinks, enough to work up a dew.

“There are dozens,” The man answers with disinterest, but he stops on the cobblestones in front of her with sincerity in the corners of his squinting eyes. She’s glad all at once that she remembered her sunnies. 

She tries not to bare her teeth, but she has places to be and the man is obviously a local. “A specific one. The kiosk has been besmirched and I don’t know which direction to go.” 

The man sighs, but holds out his hand for her scrap of paper and reads it. “You’re at Patton and Biltmore, which is close. Take a right on that road,” he points, “and it’ll be on the other side of that big red double decker.” 

Before she can think him properly, he has already stomped off in the way he says she needs to go.

“I’ll take you,” He offers as he turns around like a mother bear waiting on her cub to tag along behind her. “‘S on my way. Sorry--it’s just I’m in a hurry,” but he waves her in his direction and he waits for her to catch up and she’s surprised.

She walks behind him on the uneven concrete sidewalk, smushed against storefronts and glass windows in the effort to stay away from the strangers who are forcing her there. Passing a street performer that is balancing on all different parts of her impressive body, Jemma is forced to make eye contact with what feels like a multitude of people. They laugh and hold hands, taking up most of the walking space and darting around trees and light posts. This is something she remembers, at least.

“Having lunch?” the man asks. “I’m surprised you weren’t curious enough to eat on the bus, being English and all.” 

“Is it good?” She asks, watching as the thing he mentions grows before her, just on the corner and locked within a big black gate. A sign on the street reads: croissants, chocolate or spinach, two for five. 

He stops at the gate and shrugs. “The first time you eat there it is.” 

“Oh, alright.” She thinks she knows what this means, and only partially because of the amount of time her class has spent on the senses in the last module. He means that new and diverse tastes are more enjoyable. Once you have them again, it’s never as good as you remember.

“This is it?” She stands before The Blackbird, where she is meant to meet Phil and Melinda and realizes that she must wait for the light to turn so she can enter the crosswalk, where a group is growing on the corner, facing opposite directions like cherubs guarding a manor door. 

“Yes, I get off here. I need to head another way, but I hope you have a good lunch.” 

“Jemma,” she says to satisfy the politer parts of her. “Nice to meet you. Hope you enjoy your lunch as well.” 

He answers with a grimace, “duty calls,” before marching in the direction of a quiet side street that appears to be mostly giant, elegant churches from different denominations, side by side. Children lined up on the playground. Every city has a Church Street, it seems. 

Jemma watches as the man moves on without ado, and as he double-takes and turns around to outstretch a hand.

“Fitz,” he says. He smiles, one of those people who doesn’t show their teeth, and heads off again, this time without turning back.

* * *

  
  


He arrives back to the stuffy, dark, creaking old office and lets himself in as quietly as possible in the effort not to wake the boss’ dachshund. It is futile; the boss is in a meeting with a frustrated client and the dog is set off immediately with the god-awful racket Fitz has grown used to. And increasingly more tired of. He nudges the dog - very gently - with the toe of his shoe so the old blind thing can smell him, and he delivers Mr. Ryan’s sandwich into the refrigerator. 

He heads back to his desk, opens the blinds once more, and stands there, feet apart. Even he thinks there is a chance that he is going to remember where on earth he has seen that woman before. A familiar cadence in her voice, he wonders if she attended the same school that he did or if he has seen her on television at one point or another. All for naught, as his cellular buzzes from its perch on his bookshelf and his mum is texting him again.

_ [Darling, are you coming for dinner?] _ Mum asks, simply, though she knows the answer. It’s the same one they have most weeks that she has invited him over since his father moved back into their home and Fitz packed up and left.

Sure, he could hike all the way back up to her cabin in the woods, surrounded by dying trees and his father’s old rusting machines. He could listen to the two of them quarrel over little things like whether or not the parakeet actually likes the millet Mum has bought for it. Or the big things. Like when Dad has decided to stop drinking or if he intends to at all. A lovely conversation to be had at the floral tablecloth, over the vase of carnations that surely Dad has brought home as some sort of lousy consolation prize to follow a nasty fallout. 

_ [Sorry, mum, I’ve an appointment.] _ He tells her the truth as a good son should. 

He’s supposed to meet May at 6:00, a rearranged and awkward appointment since she is working late to accommodate the gap in her schedule in the middle of the day. As a rule, May doesn’t allow them to talk about her personal life, but he gets the feeling something is off. She’s been gone often. 

Fitz takes a seat in his spinning chair and studies the dust motes that float in the light of the sun. It’s rather dark in his corner of the office. Everyone he meets thinks the idea is charming, working in the historic district of town, but there are things that none of them consider: the musty smell of the library, the slanting floor that always has him scrambling to get back to his desk once he has drifted away in his rolling chair without purpose, and the off-kilter drafting table on which he is expected to work. 

Once the client has gone, Mr. Ryan pushes his way into Fitz’s area, sectioned off from the waiting room by only a bookshelf tall enough to block out the majority of light from the window. On top, Fitz has rested his favorite plant. It requires little light to flourish and May says this is the best way to bring life into your workspace--to actually bring life into it. Imagine the coronary that should seize Mr. Ryan if he thought well enough to bring the cat and call it discrimination for him to deny Smudge entry.

In the past, the other attempts have sputtered and fizzled out. Mr. Ryan hated the lamp that he brought in and Fitz took it home to light the bedroom the same day. The tiny stereo that he played concentration music on lasted even less time. In this office, with the worn carpeting and the thick smelly drapes, he has been imprisoned. (Though to be fair, the insurance is good.)

“Your sandwich is in the fridge along with your drink from home,” he announces, though he can see this isn’t what Mr. Ryan was expecting to hear from the furrow that scrubs his forehead.

The large fellow huffs and sticks out his chest in a familiar manner. “Were you going to tell me that Ms. Whitehall was so dissatisfied with your design.”

Fitz shrugs before he answers, “I wasn’t aware she was, sir.” 

As he chides his assistant, he wiggles his fingers and points at the design that Fitz has been working on for the past two weeks. The two of them have meet on this particular profile, the conservatory that Ms. Whitehall intends to add onto her kitchen, once every couple of days and without fail, regardless of the changes that Fitz has made to the design, Mr. Ryan finds something wrong with the blue print.

“Your measurements are off.” This is the new complaint. 

With a sigh that he exaggerates for the good of the conversation, he scratches the back of his head. “I’ll take another look.” He lies. The measurements are not wrong, in fact, they’re perfect. “I can’t believe I screwed this one up.” 

The big man eyes him suspiciously. “You’re going to have to learn how to be more careful if you’re going to be working up my client’s pieces. If you can’t do it, I’m going to have to start looking for someone else.” 

Fitz makes a show of hanging his head. “You’re right, sir. I’m sorry.” He doesn’t have to believe the criticism; he just has to appear to.

“My name is going on these designs, Fitz. They need to reflect my quality of work,” The master leaves and hopes that he has made a big enough impact on his assistant.

It is a type of impact. Not the kind he might expect, since Fitz cannot see anything in his constructive criticism other than criticism. During the night, Fitz wakes in cold sweat, remembering deadlines that don’t actually exist and emails that he didn’t answer (since they never came to him). The kind of impact that Mr. Ryan leaves is of flinching and hunching over. Not flattering. He can do better, but why bother? 

Oh yes, because he’s got a fantastic political reputation and a couple of years with Mr. Ryan will have him set for years to come. None too soon since the bloke seems to be keen on retiring soon anyway.

He sits and rolls away the tracing paper upon which his design was rendered, places it in his cardboard tube, and resigns it to the storage room in the basement along with all the others. “It’s fine,” he whispers to himself as he clicks the naked light bulb overhead off. “This is barely real anyway.”


	2. Chapter 2

“I know that it’s not healthy to be thinking about her so much. She was a stranger on the street. But I can’t help it.”

“Intrusive thoughts aren’t new to you. The technique we developed for the thoughts about your dad, that might work here, too.” May offers. She’s been thinking about other things lately, and he can tell from the way she rocks her pen over her fingers back and forth. Flat stones skipping over a placid lake.

There is something much different about the office, too, he realizes through his scan. This is a defense mechanism. Instead of meeting the eyes of the person that you talk to, sometimes it is easier to look over their shoulder, and May doesn’t mind, just so long as he can get the words out. She has told him before that they can focus on that skill later. 

“They aren’t bad thoughts.” He defends as he listens to the ticking of his therapist’s wall clock.

It is when she answers him next that he starts to put the information together. “Okay, but you are agreeing that they intrude on your daily life, right?” She tilts her head, another unusual look from this therapist. 

On the desk where she takes her notes, May has removed and stacked the photo frames that used to hold pictures of her wedding day, family photos, things that he has only seen in a quick glance. Things like that are too intimate and he can’t stand to look at them.

Fitz squeezes shut his eyes and thinks of every time that he has seen Jemma or when she has popped into his thoughts for the previous week, which is too uncomfortably-high of a number to divulge. “While I’m in the shower and while I’m walking to work.” That’s when she shows up again. “I think the first time I thought of her for more than a second was the night that I met her on the street and I was cooking dinner for myself.” 

He remembers standing over the steaming oven range and turning his chicken breast over, and for a moment it felt so domestic that he could imagine her standing in her sundress by him in the kitchen, tossing a salad or stirring something in a pot. He can’t remember. What he does remember was the curve of her smile and the line of her hip under the sunflower-covered fabric. Fitz remembers these things as clear as day, until the jingling sound of the overhead fan draws him back into the real world. 

“Homey things, huh?” May makes a note in her leather-bound book, but normally reserved those pages for names and scientific concepts that she would need to research later in order to understand what he was saying to her. Since the first month or so, she didn’t makes other types of notes anymore. “And you haven’t seen her since the day on the street when you gave her the directions?”

“No,” he answered. 

“What else do you remember about them? Were you alone every time the thoughts came back?”

“I’m alone most of the day, though,” he admits with a half-laugh. It’s true, unless she counts Mr. Ryan’s dog or his useless ball of a cat at home.

She drafts something else in the notebook, but her pen makes scribbling noises as though she is marking something out.

“I think I’ve met her before. But if I did, then she might remember me and she didn’t seem to.” Fitz chews his bottom lip and peels a bit of dried skin off with his teeth. 

“You’re fidgeting again. Why don’t you take the pillow while we talk about it?” 

This is something they have worked on successfully. It’s worth being proud of, he knows, to have moved on from hitting his head against the wall to grounding himself in the office by squeezing the floppy green pillow that she keeps on his chair. Well, it’s not his chair. Sometimes it feels more familiar than his own skin. 

“Do you think she would forget if she had met you before?” May asks without writing in the notebook, which is an encouraging sign.

“I’m not that special.”

“I think you are.” She does not miss a beat this time; she never does. “And I think that maybe this is a signal that it’s time to go out and work on developing your desire for connection. It’s good.”

The biggest sigh of relief erupts from his chest. “So this is just a signal. This isn’t me beginning to go mad.” 

May smirks in a way that has become familiar to him. “You aren’t going to be stalking her home or waiting for her on the street corners, right?” 

He can feel his face contort into a scowl in response, though of course that was a question that must arise. “No, that would be disgusting. Absolutely bonkers.” 

“Great,” she says and she closes her notebook and tosses it onto her messy desk covered in those picture frames. “You know I had to ask.”

Fitz nods. This is something that he respects about May. She does get right to the point without mincing words. She’s never tried to fool him.

“We should talk about how dinner went with your family.”

Ah. He knew she would ask eventually. “They had to reschedule to Thursday which was the day we had our last appointment.”

May looks at him over her thick line of eyelashes. “And this was good enough of a reason not to go.” 

Fitz squeezes the pillow. “Right.” 

“Well, I think you do understand here the complications around avoiding it, but I’m not going to try to shame your for it.”

“I know that I should have offered to drop by in the afternoon or asked to choose another day over the weekend.”

“Should?”

“Could have,” this is a way of reminding him of the mantra they chose a long time ago.  _ I don’t have to do anything if I don’t want to. _

For a moment, May looks at the clock, and Fitz follows suit, knowing that they’re either at the end of the session or that they will be in a moment. “What’s the homework, doctor?” he jokes. There are plenty of degrees displayed on her wall, but none of them is a doctorate.

In a conscious position, she sits straight and puts her hands in her lap. “Let’s take the last few minutes to look around on the internet. Find a social event that you can try out.”

Fitz gives her a look even though they both know that he will agree to do the work. 

“Just try, I said. You can leave if you don’t like it.” May sits at her computer and flicks the thing on. It only takes a moment for her to find the first couple of options: a meeting for young professionals and a hot-dog eating competition in the park.

* * *

  
  


The brewery smells stale. As Fitz follows the signs printed on copy paper that are taped to the wall, he finds himself distracted by a number of things, but most notably the dark room he is meant to be heading to. While he is the only one who can feel or hear it, the thumping of his heart is embarrassing. If this doesn’t work, if he doesn’t “make friends” then there is nothing to occupy his time. He won’t be able to see his notes in the dimness. Nevertheless, he pushes onward.

Fitz presses a hand to the nearest table and withdraws instantly, frustrated that the surface is sticky. He can’t put his bag down here, let alone his notebook. 

It’s louder in the brewery than he imagined it would be. Chatter permeates the thick air around him, but even in the low light it seems that no one is comfortable enough to stand by him and he is in no shape to introduce himself to anyone else, so he heads to the bar and orders an ale to bring back to his table.

He takes a deep breath before having a sip of the thing, and it does smell quite good, he has to admit to himself. 

“They call it Beer City here sometimes, right? Do you like it?” An approaching voice darts behind him like and is hijacked by the doppler effect, and Jemma crosses behind him to take the seat nearest the wall. Is he having a bloody stroke? If only his therapist had been there to see it.

Okay. Deep breathing. “Hi,” he greets the apparition hesitantly and she smiles with her jelly bean-pink lips the way he remembers.

“So you’re a young professional, eh?” She asks as she digs around in her bag, which she has plopped on the sticky table with abandon.

“Uh, yeah, are you?” He scans the room again. No one seems to think he’s talking to himself. 

One by one, Jemma’s things litter the table. First, it is an impressive stack of tea bag packages, then a ruddy, creased-up,gnarly book of crossword puzzles, and at last before she gasps, she pulls out a half-decimated package of chewing gum. She opens a piece before she answers. “No, not right now. Coming here is extra credit for an online class I’m taking.” 

Fitz watches her hands while she dumps all of the things back into her handbag. “What kind of a class?”

“Biology,” she answers as she scans the room around him. “I’ve been studying for a long while now, and I’m only a class away from getting my next degree.” 

He nods. The next sip of his beer tastes chilled and strong, heavy on his tongue. He is supposed to meet new people here today. How is he unable to get the words to come out? 

“What about you?” Jemma asks. As she speaks, the peppermint gum finds her tablemate and turns the flavor of his beer into a taste entirely lighter that reminds him of Christmas. 

He coughs to break the wavering feeling that has settled in his throat. “I’m an assistant at an architecture firm down the road.” Was that enough, he wondered? To get her to talk to him for a while? Exactly how did people act and talk and think an initiate this sort of thing?

“That sounds fascinating,” she said, taking her mobile phone and pointing the camera out over the crowd to take a picture.

“It’s,” he struggled for the word, “it’s different.” Different than what? 

* * *

  
  


When she arrives back to the apartment she shares with Daisy, the acid in her stomach has returned with a vengeance. Her back aches for no understandable reason--the embryo is not heavy yet. Only the size of a raspberry, so she treks into her bathroom and starts the bath. 

“Hey!” her roommate enters without knocking. “You walked right past me without saying hello.” 

“Sorry, I was thinking about other things.” She admits, sitting on the toilet lid and shucking off her sandals before pulling an antacid from the medicine cabinet. 

A look of concern crosses Daisy’s face. “Are you alright?” She is soft, and she takes a seat on the bathroom mat. 

Maybe in another world, Jemma would be uncomfortable to undress there, but having grown up at Daisy’s side, her nakedness is a small matter. In the changing room, in the cabanas at the pool, streaking at midnight on the beach. These are her favorite memories of the two of them. Her chest tightens still when she thinks about how hard she laughed. She sinks into the lukewarm of the bathtub and finally answers. “Just ill. Nothing abnormal.” 

“Can I get you anything?” Daisy asks, ever obedient ever since the growing child had come into being.

Jemma stretched her toes out under the stream of warm water, glad to remember that feeling of weightlessness again. “I’m going to be fine. I’m just nauseated.” She wiggled an eyebrow. “My tits hurt.” She admitted with a giggle elicited by her own bawdiness.

Daisy pinched her eyes together, but didn’t laugh openly, though it was obvious that she thought it was just as ridiculous a thing to say, at least coming from Jemma. “I’ve been thinking, we haven’t talked about it a lot.” 

“Of course not.” 

“We should. You being my best friend and all.” She focused on the floor, dragging a thumbnail through the grout between the tiles, all immaculately scrubbed because in addition to the fatigue, her best friend was also dealing with insomnia. 

Jemma leaned her head against the cold porcelain of the tub and found her response coming out more deliberately than she was used to. “What do you want to talk about?” She asked. The words did not come quickly in the manner that she was used to when talking to Daisy. What was she afraid of?

Daisy made a quick turn of face before meeting Jemma’s tired eyes. “I want to say thank you, for what you’re doing for mom and dad.”

“Oh, psh. They would have done it for me, were it the other way around. Or you. I think you would have, too.”

“I can’t tell you how excited they are about the baby.” Daisy’s words seem to slow as well. 

While reaching her hand down to massage her swelling feet, Jemma tries not to smile, too. She never imagined this would be the way that she would bring life into the world for the first time. “I’m excited, too. For them, I mean.” 

In the past, she had imagined holding a husband’s hand at the first sonogram, cooing together over the fetus’s little developing hands and making jokes about webbed toes. She imagined being held at night as she went to sleep with his wide hands covering her stomach like a shield. Never had a man been developed in the visions, but when she thought of it now, she imagined him wearing starched shirts and carrying a brain full of delicious recipes. Maybe, if she were a lucky girl, he would rub her shoulders in the afternoons, and as Jemma sat in the tub in her bathroom with her best old friend, she begins to cry. Those damn hormones. 

“I’ve never seen them like this. I guess after trying so long they really gave up for a while.”

Jemma’s tired, but at least the antacids are starting to kick in. “They didn’t give up at all, I think.” 

She remembers the day that they tell Daisy, and Jemma who is visiting, that they’re going to try again. They elaborate on how the agency has found a surrogate to carry their baby and how they’ve already met her and had dinner and that she’s agreed to help them. And the remembers when the woman decides to drop out. Jemma’s not sure if that’s the right word. It seems very sudden, and it seems that she is almost there again when she thinks about it. They break to the news to Daisy while in the living room with no fancy announcement in the way that they announce the idea’s conception.

Most clearly, she remembers the furrow on Uncle Phil’s brow and the tears welling in Aunt Melinda’s eyes.

“I know you didn’t have to do this.” Daisy speaks like a dirge. “I should have done it instead.”

“Weird,” Jemma jokes after a moment of silence. It takes a little bit of time to get the grief out. She has to remember, too, that they’re likely to get the happy ending they deserve now that the embryo has implanted and seeing them so happy so far has been worth every self-administered injection she’s had. “I suppose I get it, that you’d want to help them out since they’re family, and sure, they’re not your ‘real’ parents, but it still seems strange to think there was ever a chance that you would carry their baby for them.” 

A sharp O forms over Daisy’s mouth and she laughs at the thought. “There was never a concrete chance of that, Ms. Simmons.”

As they talk, she drains some of the water out of the bathtub and refills the difference with hot water to ease her aches. “It seemed like an easy offer to make at the time. A period of time in which I do a favor for someone else. She’s not my baby and she won’t be. I’m just serving as her habitat for a while.”

“She?” Daisy asks with skepticism.

“All babies start as little girls. For now, I think it sounds better than calling the baby an it.” 

Daisy stands up to head out of the room, but she turns once she gets to the door. “I’m going to make you a cup of tea, and while I do that, I want you to consider that I’m one-hundred percent sure that regardless of the baby’s junk, that he’s a boy.”

Jemma drew her legs up to her chest and smiled. Maybe he was a little boy.

On the bathroom floor, just by where she sat in the attempt to relax, Jemma’s mobile phone vibrated. 

_[Was a funny coincidence to see you again today.]_ The phone read, obviously that man who she’d ran into at the extra-credit event. 

_[Nice to meet you.]_ She typed back after she dried her hands on her towel. 

_ [I didn’t know if you’d text me back.] _

The message arrived almost immediately after she sent her reply. It was a curious thing. Everything about Fitz read: grumpy, shy, or awkward. She wasn’t sure what to say back to that, but she knew better than to seem too eager. The first person that you meet in a new town doesn’t usually become a good friend and men so easily construe all attention as romantic. She couldn’t ask too many questions or she would run the risk of seeming involved. He did genuinely seem an alright person. _[I hope you enjoyed meeting some new friends.]_

There is a pause long enough to make Jemma lean back into the tub and close her eyes, to begin imagining that tea Daisy was brewing.

_ [It was a bust, honestly. But at least you get extra credit.] _ The phone buzzed again. Alright. That was enough for one night.

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys! If you got any of the snow, I hope you're enjoying it. Personally, I like being stuck indoors.

Jemma keeps things organized. This is a tried and true defense. Because even though she loves her to death, her roommate is too opposite in this arena. 

If Jemma leaves anything out in a common area overnight, it would be eaten by some pile of laundry or garbage by the time she woke up, and she knows this because she has tested the theory and lost a pair of running shorts, a set of keys, and her favorite blue pen. Having learned this lesson the hard way, she keeps her things tucked away where they are meant to go and she never loses them, which is really the most important part of her tactic. There is the space where she leaves her cardigan and there is where she leaves the watering can. Out of sight but close within reach.

“You’re home,” Daisy notes as she trods through the hallway this time, ever surprised to see Jemma in the apartment they share. Jemma sometimes wonders if Daisy knows that she lives there permanently and hasn’t made too many friends yet. She is a flushed color and is wearing her trainers, probably just back from a jog around the block.

Jemma looks at her over the cover of her book, one of many she is meant to be studying with if only she could concentrate. Before starting, she weeded out all possible distractions. There was no music, and the clock was not ticking seconds of precious studying time away. The room was a cool and cozy temperature made only cozier by the warm lamp light that she turned on beside her chair. “Yeah, I’m home.” She mutters, still frustrated that she can’t find her focus, and the look must be obvious because Daisy’s ears perk up the same way they did when the two were little girls talking about their new crushes.

“I’m heading out to go pick up some things at the mall. If you need a break from that,” she points at the neglected schoolwork, “I’d be happy to have you come with.” There is recognition there, as though Daisy has felt the desperation before and knows how to go around it. “You look like you need a break from the intricacies of the human body.”

This is what makes Jemma laugh, the way her friend can find the humor in everything, somehow keeping most of her jokes tasteful despite the cheap jabs she could make if she wanted to. At its essence, growing a human being is beautiful and equally disgusting. Maybe it is that unspoken knowledge that keeps the momentum going, the underlying thread between every event that they have gone through together. She almost misses the buzzing sound from her mobile phone, which casts Fitz’s latest response to her last message. 

This time, he sends a photo of his cat in response to her express interest. He seemed more like a dog-lover, she told him, and he told her she was right. The photo is not what she imagined.  _ [ _ _ This is Smudge] _ , his caption reads under the image of a brown tabby who is curled up like an eggplant beside his thigh, just barely in the corner of the picture.

“Who’s that?”

“Just an acquaintance,” she answers before flipping the phone so Daisy can see the cat as well.

As she approaches the chair, Jemma can hear just how tired she really is from the jog. “People don’t text acquaintances. What you’ve got there is a friend.” 

_ [I’m not allowed dogs at the flat.] _

“A British friend, huh? Visiting sometime soon?” Daisy is always enthralled by a foreign accent, Jemma knows. She leans over the phone and Jemma’s chair with interest and takes a moment to coo over the old cat.

“Ah, no, he lives here in the city.”

“Oh! Well I’ve never met him before.” She makes her eyes big as saucers, “Is there something weird about him? Be honest.”

Realizing there is no way she’ll get focused back on the reading, she puts her book aside as her friend sits on the edge of the already-made bed. “I don’t think so.”

“You wouldn’t. You’re always see the best in people anyway.” Daisy observes. She unlaces her shoes and removes them, tossing them onto the immaculately-vacuumed carpet that Jemma adores.

With a great deal of effort, she excuses the offense. As far as compliments go, she could do worse. “He seems a bit shy, but he’s friendly on the phone.”

“If the  _ old chap _ ’s not a weirdo, then what’s he like?”

“He likes to ask about how my day went, but he doesn’t tell me much about himself.”

Daisy smirks. “That is kind of sketchy. The first thing you get from him is a photo of his cat? Seems like a crush to me.” With a low giggle, she looks away and drags her fingers through the fur on Jemma’s throw blanket.

Ha! Jemma pushes her shoulder playfully. “Don’t be juvenile.” And besides, this isn’t his first message to her, but she’s not going to divulge that freely.

“Don’t be juvenile,” she copies with sarcasm in the voice she uses to mimic only one other person. When she does this, Jemma sees Daisy’s father in her mannerisms. As punctuation, she sticks out her tongue before heading into the bathroom for a shower. 

While she’s away, Jemma packs away her books and tries to think of the next exam. Exam. Her attention is split between the two different meanings of the word, one meaning the test on genetic engineering that she is surely going to bomb or the test that she has after that or the next appointment with the next doctor who will prod her with various instruments and check off questions on a list that Melinda May could recite the answers to in her sleep. She sighs and takes a look at her cell phone again, formulating a response to the photo of the cat. It’s an easier test to complete and it is telling, isn’t it? That he’d send a photo at all, even though she did ask for it. 

_ [I think he’s just darling], _ she settles, but she’s halfway tempted to tell him that Smudge doesn’t look like he’s able to bathe himself in the manner that he should. And the gets a message from May just after. This one is a picture as well, but this time, it is she and Phil sitting together in a parenting class and it looks as though Uncle Phil is expertly swaddling a baby. 

She writes a little something back to them, noncommittal about how they’re already pros and don’t even need a class since her best friend was probably so tough to raise, but she knows this is about more things than one. They aren’t able to feel the baby move inside of them. Neither can she yet, but she will and they won’t. 

“Are you alright?” Daisy asks, and she walks in wrapped in her towel. She rummages around Jemma’s closet and pulls out a clean top.

“Of course. Why do you ask?”

Daisy stops in the doorway on her trip out. “I don’t know. You just looked kind of sad, I guess.” 

Oh, does she think of spilling it? Of course. She should. There are only five secrets that are not safe with Daisy Johnson, and most of them are the cures to various diseases. “I suppose I’m a bit overworked.”

“Okay. I hear you. I’m going to go get dressed and I’ll be right back. We can talk about it over a milkshake or something, right?” 

Jemma nods. She thinks she’ll need more than fifteen minutes, though. 

* * *

  
  
  


They arrive to a large open building that she realizes she’s never visited before despite having gone to the city a dozen times before. It is a surprisingly empty plaza that plays no distracting music and smells of cleaners and perfumes from the various candle stores that people fill and unload in groups. On looking, she figures these are the most popular places to shop.

“I’m ready to hear all about your fancy college course, and I’m going to assume that’s what was upsetting you because school is a snoozefest.” Daisy wraps an arm around her friend’s shoulders as the two of them descend a ramp on their tramp to the food court.

“That’s a part, yeah.” 

“Okay. What are the other parts? We can start wherever you want.” 

“A pleasure,” Jemma notes.

“Anything for the incubator growing my little sister.” She points at her stomach with a five star smile that might make any toddler grow weak in the knees.

“That’s another part of it.”

Daisy’s eyes fall a little bit, she can see, in the corners and she knows that she has offended her, but she wouldn’t ever admit it. “I don’t mean that the fetus makes me sad. I mean that it’s… well, it’s stressful. And I add that onto the work that I simply cannot process due to the complications of a pregnancy, and you know, I never thought that pregnancy-brain was a real thing, but these symptoms are giving me a run for my money.”

“I get it.” she says in the way she does when they must talk about serious things. “Other than the incestuousness of it, I think that’s one of the reasons I wouldn’t undertake a burden like this.”

Jemma must laugh. “You make it sound like I’ve shot myself in the foot.”

They near the food court where Daisy beelines for the counter that serves milkshakes in ridiculous sizes and she orders two for them. They talk about the weather while they wait, the smaller crowds of people since there are no leaf-peepers in town. Screaming children play on soft equipment in a gated safe-haven inside the center of the court and drown out all hope of a serious conversation, but there is something that seems alright about waiting for a while, and watching them fool around and yell to each other, laugh louder than any adult ever has.

A welcome symptom, she notices, is the increase in smell that sometimes makes her stomach turn but also heightens the cocoa aroma of her drink and makes it taste as though it is the first bite of chocolate she has ever had and she may decide to turn cartwheels in the playpen.

“Does your friend know about the baby?” Daisy asks with her straw still hanging from her mouth.

“Friend?”

“Sorry,” she removes the thing from her mouth to speak more clearly, almost like a responsible adult, “You never told me his name.” 

In a moment, she remembers. “No, we don’t talk about personal things like that.” Just another thing to add to the list of forgotten facts.

“Right. He just sends you cat-porn.” 

Jemma shakes her head and looks away from the children in the arena for more than a second for the first time since the pair of them sit down. “A rather awkward conversation. He knows that I just moved here and that I’m studying and that seems enough for right now.”

They finish their drinks and Daisy pulls the two of them into a brightly-lit store full of plain clothing. It’s nothing different than what Jemma wears and she can tell that this is on purpose. 

Her friend hands her two dresses as she paws through a rack of tee shirts that all appear to be of the same design so she’s not sure what there is to study from it. “Hold these up. Which do you like better? I’m going to get you one as a treat.”

Jemma looks at her indignantly as she thinks of all the special treats that have been given to her since she agreed to carry someone else’s embryo. 

“You’ll need more clothes anyway, Simmons,” she complains in match. Defiant, Daisy takes her cell phone and snaps a picture of Jemma holding them up.

And she presses send.

“Daisy Johnson!” She hears herself squeal while she tosses the dresses over a nearby rack and takes her phone back to see that the photo has been sent to Fitz directly.

_ [The pink.] _ he responds, almost right away.

“See! What were you worried about?” Daisy drapes several things over her arm and drags Jemma into the dressing room.

Closing the door behind her, Jemma takes the time to strip off her studying clothes and purposely tries on both of the dresses. They both fit her in the same way, tighter around the top, coming to natural waist that simply will not stay this shape or size, and flares to a hem just above her knee. 

“What are you going to say back to him?” Comes the voice from the stall next to hers.

“Nothing,” she mumbles as she spins in the mirror, feeling heavier than a walrus from the weight of that milkshake. 

“Hiya, which color dress do you want to tear off me? I’m sure you do since the cat pic is obviously a tease.”

“Daisy, don’t forget the considerable amount of men in this world who just don’t know that they’re flirting at all. Could be just innocent banter or meant to be only friendly.”

“Ugh, Jemma.” An unlatching sound is heard as Daisy opens her stall door and leans against Jemma’s closed stall. “Men do not talk to pretty women without thinking of that.”

Someone’s voice rings out in the background, “True!” It’s another woman from somewhere down the hall. 

“He’s British. It’s a bit different.” She says while she changes into the light pink piece next that she wants to dislike. Slowly, she opens the door a crack and then the rest of the way to show it. “Not that British men can’t be sleazy. What I mean to say is that we probably have more in common than he might have with other women.”

There’s a smile on Daisy’s face. “You look beautiful.”

“I look like the illustration of a fallopian tube on the wall at the OB’s.”

“You look like a piece of saltwater taffy.” 

Her heart jumps just a little at the compliment. Daisy has inquisitive eyes that look at people without judgment and without prejudice and she knows that she would never look at her with insincerity. She is the best friend Jemma has ever known. 

“So what are you going to say to him next?” The repetition is purposeful.

Embarrassment clouds her face, she knows. “I don’t know, Daisy. It’s not worth thinking about, honestly.” 

Together, they pick up their things and wait in line and she leaves with a new pink dress one size bigger that she may be able to wear for a few more weeks yet.

“Let me send the next message.” Daisy begs once they’re finished paying. “I think that’s a fair trade for the new closet staple.”

Jemma’s eyebrow leans while they make their way past the food court once more and out to the bookstore that Daisy promised they would visit after in another one of her trades. “You said it was a gift for something that I’m already doing. And why do you care anyway? I am obviously too busy for any friends aside from you, let alone any boy you think has a crush on me.”

“Trust me.” She pleads.

In the nature that they always come to, she concedes and removes the phone from her back pocket only to stare over her friend’s shoulder as she types and send the message that reads:  _ [ _ _ I know it’s a poor trade off. Wish I had cat pictures to send.] _

“Well, I’ll try not to sound insulted.”

“Trust me.”

The two search through rows and rows of books, themed sections of the stores that carry merchandise to match. Jemma spends an absurd amount of her time in the biology section wrestling with the guilt of knowing there is no way she is going to get good marks the exam she must take the next day.

After a while, Daisy can be heard shouting from over a tall shelf of fiction, “What time is it?”

Prompted, Jemma slides her phone open and tries not to gasp. As she reads, her face grows as hot as a poker.

_ [I’ll trade you for your time. How about you join me and we try a coffee at the bus?] _

She sees that the message was sent a lifetime ago and panics. What if he rescinded the offer and what happens if she declines? Blast! Her heart thumps from more than the charge she makes for her best friend, already distracted by a romance novel she’s found with a stoic dark-haired man on the cover.

“Look at what you did!” she stabs the phone at Daisy who simply looks surprised. 

“Well, what’s wrong? He did exactly what I expected him to.” She sighs. 

“What do I say?” 

“What do you want to say?” She lazily examines the cover again and then the blurbs on the back before shelving the book in favor of the one beside it: A man and woman leaning against each other before a smouldering fireplace, their hands hidden beneath a tartan blanket.

The words don’t quite come to the surface. Instead, they struggle for her throat all at once and incoherent syllables stumble from her mouth in no particular order. She fidgets and gets nothing else from her friend, the actual nightmarish director of this plan, and with a loss for those words, she types:  _ [ _ _ Sounds tasty. I have lots of schoolwork, though.] _ and it isn’t false. She does, and she should be home doing the work because the night has come and stolen all the rest of her free time and the employees of the bookstore have gone over the intercom to tell them to bring their things to the front of the store anyway.

_ [Maybe another time.] _

This message is properly loaded. It might mean a variable of different things. Has she hurt his feelings?  _ [ _ _ I don’t mean anything by it.] _ This probably doesn’t make too much of a difference as regardless, he’s read that she doesn’t want to meet up with him again. She shakes her head and shoves the phone in her pocket, and though it buzzes just after, she doesn’t have the heart to read it and she follows Daisy to the counter to check out instead.

“I don’t understand why you’re so flustered. You’ve made it clear that you don’t like him. Saying no to a date shouldn’t bother you so much.”

“It’s not a date!” Jemma crosses her arms and pretends that her voice isn’t as shrill as it comes out. If she’d driven herself, she likely would have taken off home already.

[Don’t worry about it], She reads as her companion finishes paying for the romance novel that will litter the floor the next day. She types back, _[_ _The semester ends this winter, though :)]_ remembering that she will eventually, if all goes according to plan, birth the cherry that’s growing in her tummy and have time to do social things.

“This is because of the pregnancy, isn’t it? That’s the driving force behind all of your apprehension.” Daisy’s eyes are touched with a knowing look, though it isn’t as much of a theory as it is a fact.

“Of course it is.” A sneer rips through Jemma as they walk through the dimmed parking lot

The drive is short, the roads near empty and the two head back to their downtown apartment on the usual route, passing by several astute municipal buildings and posh restaurants that neither of them has eaten at before.

And this time, Jemma cracks. “Think about how frightening that would be, you know, if he  _ were _ thinking about this in a romantic sort of way. That the girl he fancies is already carrying a child that is not his, and she has been since before they met. How awkward that would be.”

“So you do believe me, that this is flirting.” Daisy smiles again, pleased with herself obviously, and too smug.

“You’re right that we don’t talk about it.” She starts to explain, but has to break almost immediately. Instead, the pair sits in the parked car together, listening to the radio croon some new pop song. “It’s scary. For me as well.”

“Of course it is! Why do you think I didn’t want to do it?” 

In the effort to seem ambivalent, Jemma shrugs and holds her hands out, palms open and facing the searing moonlight. “I know that I won’t end this situation a single mother, or even a mother at all. But if it’s this scary to me, I can only imagine how it could be for anyone else. I know what happens in the end, and he never would. He might worry that he’s signing up for something else.”

Daisy shrugs, ambivalent herself and probably sincere about that. “Okay, you’re right. It’s just texting. I’m going to try not to push.”

Harder than she expected, Jemma reaches for her hand and squeezes it. There are books inside that need to be read, but her heart feels heavy like lead and for some reason, all she can think about is that ruddy cat. 

She spends the night alone with the door shut and trying to focus on the genetic editing portion of the book, which is laughable considering she is holding someone’s genetically selected egg so she ought to be an expert by now. There is something exciting about the room and the low light, the quiet in the flat that sounds only of the buzzing aircon coming on and off to keep the temp low since she overheats so easily. Once the chapter is finished, since she is still awake, she tries on the fallopian tube dress again and looks in the mirror, turns sideways to look though she knows intellectually that there is no visible bump, and is satisfied. 

There is something strange that crosses over her, and she reaches for her mobile to snap a picture and she send the photo, without concern, to Fitz’s cellular phone. So be it, she thinks.

And though it is well past midnight, he answers anyway:  _ [ _ _ Looks nice.]  _

* * *

  
  
  


Despite himself, he reads the text from Jemma again.  _ [ _ _ I think he’s just darling.] _ It seems like something she might say. He imagines her alone in her flat with a pair of tall wool socks, doing crosswords and looking at the photo of Smudge with a little grin creeping across her face. Really, he has to laugh because all he can think when he looks at his cat is how smelly he is, and he thinks maybe he should make a joke about that just to test if she has a good sense of humor.

Fitz leans back in the nest that he has made on his sofa and turns on his documentary again. Were he clever, he thinks, he’d take the time to do something around the house as he knows he should. There are plenty of tasks in the old place that need attention like the broken, ancient garbage disposal that he told the landlord he would repair for a fifty dollar discount on last month’s rent. Not that he needed the money. Just that he wanted the distraction. He’s tried cleaning all the nooks and crannies of the flat just to keep his hands occupied, but he can’t get all of the grime out, and the last time he remembered that the reason for that was because it wasn’t grime at all, but dips and shadows and stains in the paint. Which is probably lead-based. Which is to say that the marks are permanent. 

Smudge purrs into his thigh again, rubbing against him like the best friend that he knows he is to the animal, and in response, he scratches him between the ears. “What do you think about making human friends?” It’s silly to want to ask the pet about how to get back in he socializing game, but it has been a long time. 

The night comes upon the man and his cat slowly, and they watch while they listen to the movie that has been playing in the background the sky turning first the color pink of raspberries and then the bruised color of plums before receding into deep blue entirely. It’s getting later, he realizes over the distracting noise of the narrator mispronouncing archaic words, and the later it gets, the more time passes that he could be using to do this homework of trying to make friends. 

_ [I hope you’re having a better day than me. My boss was a nightmare.] _ He types into the phone, but he deletes it before sending it.  _ [ _ _ I was thinking maybe you’d like to have a coffee this weekend] _ , he tries next before sending that message the same way as the first, because what if she thinks that is meant to be a date?  _ [ _ _ Smudge would be alright with hearing how your day was.] _ Goddamnit. Everything seems stupid. It couldn’t be so hard for other people. 

_ [What do you think? The pink or the polka dots?] _ She texts him, and he thinks he might shout--not because she has sent him a photo of her holding two dresses up for him to choose from? But because questions--those are easy to respond to. He only has to answer. 

Of course his own questions bud and flower, such as why would she ever ask him for fashion advice, unless he comes off as someone who would know something about fashion, which he is sure he doesn’t.  _ [ _ _ The pink] _ , he answers, though it doesn’t matter which dress she chooses. All that matters is that she initiated a conversation. He holds out a paw and pretends to high-five the cat who sits in the nest beside him completely uninterested. “What?” He says aloud, “I’m not completely off-putting. That’s a start!”

As he relaxes in this newfound high, he wonders what May will say when he tells her about the meeting-up group. Fitz stretches his legs out over the raw wood of his coffee table and considers this development. He should ring his mum. Maybe a year ago, he might have, before his father found her again and she fell for him. 

He bites his lip and stews alone in the flashing colored lights of the television feeling like a damn fool only long enough for Jemma to send him another message. 

_ [I know it’s a poor trade off. Wish I had cat pictures to send] _ ,  She writes.

Oh god, there are no more questions to answer. Fitz stands, and Smudge takes off for the kitchen and presumably his food bowl, making for his laptop. With a scowl, he flips the thing open and pulls up a search engine for a millisecond before closing the computer again. Pathetic, that he would need to google how to speak to someone.

_ [I’ll trade you for your time. How about you join me and we try a coffee at the bus?] _ He types this fast and sends it before he can spend too much time thinking because this always seems to be a problem. The bus is a tourist haven and there is food there and they can meet on his lunch. There are plenty of good reasons for this plan, he tells himself while he waits for her to answer.

In the time between their responses, there is time enough to finish his documentary and to shave for work the next day and even to finish up the dishes. Even Smudge seems to understand Fitz’s anxiety as he rubs against his owner’s legs at the sink. 

_ [Sounds tasty. I have lots of schoolwork, though.] _

He tries not to be disappointed as he reads, but surely this is what he should have expected. She did take a long time to answer the question. It’s fine though, really. He could meet someone else tomorrow maybe standing in line at the lunch counter at the diner or a client could come into the office that he might like. He must admit that there is something interesting about this woman, that he could swear that he has seen her before.  _ [ _ _ Maybe another time.] _ He texts this to her and wonders how the best way to phrase a question about her personal life might be since the question “are you from my hometown” seems like something a dunderhead would say. 

Fitz takes the deepest breath and resigns himself. He turns off the light in the living room and goes into the bedroom, blasted phone in hand. At his heels, the cat follows because this has become part of the routine and he remembers that when the light goes out there will be beds to sit on, to perch on like a lion with his chest out. It never ceases to amaze Fitz how confident a rag like Smudge can be.

The room feels colder than he thought it would be, and Fitz grabs his sweater to toss over the worn quilt he sleeps under even on the hot nights. Usually, this is where he goes to feel safe, and he has designed it this way purposely. It is as far away in design as he could go from his mother’s home. 

On the walls, there are shadow boxes with rocks in them, fossils of old plants and no fish. The new rocking chair has been planted in the corner facing away from his bed, obviously. Despite the small touches that he has made to purpose this very room, his favorite element is the quilt because there is something about running his hands over it that reminds him of Scotland before he and his mum moved and when things still felt safe. 

The phone, held in his free hand and the one that isn’t trying to prepare him for bed makes a noise and he winces before reading.  _ [ _ _ I don’t mean anything by it.] _

Of course she wouldn’t. By all accounts, she was a very sincere woman. Not that there was any account to consider other than his and the very small pieces that May had gathered from their last session together, obviously still interpreted through his own lens.

_ [Don’t worry about it.] _ He types this back with shaking fingers and wishes he hadn’t suggested anything. If he could just get some time with a real life person who wasn’t his godforsaken therapist. 

This time, her response is faster.  _ [ _ _ The semester ends this winter, though :)] _ She ends with a smiley face that Fitz doesn’t know how to interpret. It’s Spring; that might as well be a lifetime away.

Instead of saying anything back, and once he has looked at the clock, he resigns himself to bed and shuts off the light, trying to think of something other than being shafted by the friendliest stranger he’s met in an era. The list of things he tries not to consider grows longer consistently: his father’s infiltrating his old home, his mother’s poor decisions and efforts to undo them, and now, Fitz’s utter lack of social skills, which has plagued him since birth but currently haunts him with more tenacity than it did when he was a teenager. 

The room is too quiet until he remembers to turn on the fan, and then it is too cold. 

“Ugh,” he groans aloud as he hikes the sweater over himself and moves next to Smudge, who is like a small heater.

~~~

Because he is naked and sitting at a table in a coffee shop where no one seems to care that he  _ is _ naked, he knows he’s begun dreaming. Realizing that this is the case, however, does nothing for the delicious smell of pastries that wafts around the cafe. Hazelnuts and cocoa and what is undoubtedly a freshly smashed slew of vanilla beans. 

“Isn’t it wonderful, Fitz?” Jemma asks, sitting beside him at his tiny cafe table and completely unphased by his state of undress. She sits with her legs crossed like a sophisticate and leans over a cup of steaming coffee the same color as her eyes, deep and thick. Why is he thinking of her eyes? 

As he works to cover his lap with the closest paper napkin, he looks down at himself to discover that he has changed. He is wearing the most comfortable suit he has ever had the pleasure to know, including all of the cotton things he wore as a child going to fancy christmas parties. “It is wonderful,” he breathes and is unable to keep the surprise from his voice. 

“I like the way the stars look here.” She is intent on the window, and he steals a glance. It’s daytime. Where does she sees the stars? 

“What are you looking at?” He asks. 

She smiles with a mouth wide as the cheshire cat, her head tilted like a fox in the wild hearing a sound from somewhere too far away. “I’m looking at you, Leo.” 

He nods. Okay. The world spins from a cafe into a harbor, where he stands beside Jemma Simmons while she waves goodbye to a ship that neither of them has ever seen before. It’s embarrassing all of a sudden that he is crying and he wipes his eyes on the same napkin he tried to use to cover himself when he was naked in the cafe. He knows. This is the most important napkin in the world.

Jemma asks if she can borrow it, and with a flourish, she tosses the thing into the harbor and before he can protest, she reaches for his hand to lace their fingers together. “I’m so glad you could be here with me today. These steaks aren’t going to grill themselves.”

While he cooks them, and he flips the pieces of meat with his spatula, which looks suspiciously like Jemma’s hand “These are for you? What about your parents?” He asks, remembering that there are three parents and only three steaks which means that he’s not eating and neither are Jemma or Smudge. 

She leans over and kisses him on the cheek. “Nonsense, Fitzy.” 

Without warning, he is in the middle of the ocean, running on the water. He has never been as fast as he is in that moment. With effortless leaps, he bounds over the crests of the waves, some of them as large as tsunamis. 

~~~

Fitz wakes in a cold sweat and rolls over to remove the sweater from the top of his blanket. In the corner of his eye, he sees a small light flash on his mobile phone and tempted, he turns it on to check whatever message has come to him.

There is a photo of Jemma wearing the dress from her picture and standing in what is likely her bedroom, judging from the tidy bed in the background and the open closet full of women’s clothes. He zooms in on the photo and notes each vector on display, from the piled up textbooks on her chair to the windowsill that he can see is lined with green plants and a single bloom on a fat-leafed peace lily. There is no caption underneath Jemma’s picture.

_ [Looks nice.] _ he replies, adding in an emoji with a thumbs-up. Why is his heart beating so fast? He lays the phone face down on his chest and closes his eyes again.


	4. Chapter 4

They are back again, this time sitting in May’s office in the rain, or what can better be safely described as a thunderstorm since there’s lightning and the steady rolls of bellowing sounds. May looks at her client and waits for him to stop ranting, but he’s taking more time than usual, which makes her suspicious. He’s going to talk about that girl again, he’s probably not going to to talk about how that meetup went unless she finds a way to coax it out of him.

“--rather obsolete now, not because the technology is outdated, but because there’s no use in trying to predict the weather when a verified god of thunder goes around harking out lightning bolts whenever he sees fit--” 

She puts on her best grin, which he has not figured out yet is play acting and he is wise enough to know this means something is coming.

His soft eyes wait and he reaches for his pillow to squeeze, which means that he knows she’s going to ask and he doesn’t want to answer.

She tilts her head to the side, crosses one of her legs over the other in this dance they have been doing since he first came to her eight months ago.

“Yes?” He asks. “How are you?” 

“I’m doing well. Thanks for asking.” She answers, but really, she is nothing short of nervous considering that she and Phil have another appointment today and this time they’re doing the testing for birth defects. Sure, Jemma is healthy as a horse and she is nothing short of fantastic, but May is still aware that while she and Phil aren’t “old,” they have certainly passed the age at which women have already stopped thinking about having babies and that is  _ her _ egg in there. She’s not crazy. She’s read the research.

The young man sitting there and fidgeting replies, “I’m pleased to hear it.” 

He’ll wait for her to initiate the next portion of conversation. Knowing this, she waits for just a moment to capture the power in the room again with good intention because he responds better when he is not forced to be the one in control. Honestly, different from most of her patients.

“Last time we talked, we had planned and discussed that meetup at the bar on Lexington. How did that go?”

He nods, and his attention turns straight the window and out into the dusky brown clouds coating the sky. “It went okay.”

“Why don’t you tell me a little about it?”

A rumble of thunder permeates the silence that hangs between them while Fitz tries to find a way to dodge her question, but she has learned a lot about him and she knows that he will eventually get there. Words have a way of waiting on his tongue, but they come out.

Hoarseness is the reaction, and it hangs heavy on him like an old man clenching an handrail. “Let me think about how I should describe what happened.” He squeezes his eyes shut tight. “I met that girl again. Not because I followed her or anything. I know how it sounds.”

Yeah, it sounds creepy.

“She found me while I was sitting at a table having a pint. I thought I’d really lost it for a moment.”

“How did that go? Did the two of you strike up a conversation?” If he did the homework like she asked, the answer should be yes.

He stops looking at her and fidgets again. “I think we’re proper friends now. She gave me her telephone number and we’ve been texting each other. We had a cup of tea a couple of days after, and it was nice.”

An overwhelming urge to ask for his phone wants to consume her, but she beats it back in the way that she has perfected through the years. After all, he cannot text himself so that’s not an issue and she also knows that at his core, Fitz is really harmless. “That’s not what you expected it it?”

He shakes his head. “No, I didn’t think I’d ever see her again.” A story can be seen forming in his eyes and he begins to tell it slowly, mostly focused on either her or the plant on her bookshelf between glances at the window and the storm that’s brewing outside as he usually does. He avoids her eyes like his left depends on it, but she knows it’s simply a defense.

There’s nothing on the news about Thor today, so probably there’s nothing happening worth worrying about other than being concerned that Jemma will be safe on her way to meet them since they can’t meet her for lunch and drive her to the appointment like they usually do. Phil tried to get off work a little early, but he had already cancelled so many classes during the summer semester for the surgery and for the other appointments that came first. 

They were just lucky enough to get the OB to find a way and schedule around all three of them. Not that Jemma was up to much other than her online class. She was so close to finishing her degree. Maybe they should have waited another year before getting started, but it was much too late to reconsider.

“--after dreaming about her like an idiot.” Fitz stops.

Was it a question? She’s unsure since she wasn’t even attention the entire time he was talking. The mark of a bad therapist, she knows. In the effort to buy more time, she scribbles something in the soft black notebook that sits in her lap. May takes a deep breath. Okay, she’ll just move them in another direction.

“How do you think it would go, realistically, if you told her about that?” About what? He’ll come up with something, project the real question upon himself.

“Probably think I’m mad. I think I’m mad. I’ve only just met her and now dreaming that we’re getting married. ‘S stupid.” 

The handle comes closer and May grips it. She can get ahold of this. He likes that girl. Dream theory as a whole is bullshit, but some puzzles are easy enough to decipher. “Have you asked her?” 

“On a date?”

Bingo. Bobbing her head up and down in affirmation, May is thrilled that she got down to the root of all this.

Shrinking, Fitz tells her that he hasn’t and that he’s sure the if he did, she would say no anyway so there’s no point. “The cup of tea was quick, casual. Nothing serious.”

“You’re dreaming about her, though.” A roll of thunder crashes again and the lights flicker. What if the power goes out while they’re in the middle of the test? Would they have to reschedule for another date further away?

“And talking to her, I know. It’s been a few weeks now and she hasn’t stopped texting me, but she just moved here and she doesn’t have any friends.” He scratches at his eyebrow. “I know what that’s like. Who wants some bum sniffing around you while you’re still just trying to get your bearings?”

May considers. “It sounds like she might be trying to make friends, and you are too. Maybe it’s not a date, but more of an outing. How long did you say it’s been since you started texting?”

Flipping open his phone to take a look at the record, he finds the date and admits that it began the night they met up at the group event, at least two weeks ago.

“When we choose not to nurture our friendships, they don’t grow.” She chooses this metaphor because he’s been eyeing her purple plant for most of their session.

“Nurture,” he mutters in half-attention in much the same way that she has found herself and she remembers this look from when they began working together after his move into the city. 

In the effort to gently rouse him from whatever flashback he’s in, she clears her throat, just a little, just hoping to ground him since the trick doesn’t always work. It’s good when it does, though. “When we talk about nurturing here, we mean specific things.”

“Like what?” He’s still looking out of the window, this time watching as a dad carrying his toddler marches down the sidewalk in similarly designed raincoats. 

“We might call them for instance to ask them how they’re doing or we may buy them small gifts. We may send them a card or offer to do things to help them out when they’re busy.” 

He nods. He knows this because he’s made it this many years as a faithful son and as a professional. Maybe, she thinks, she just needs to remind him of the explicit things that must be done for friends and family. 

She scribbles into the book just a small note about how he has moved on from touching the pillow and is no longer hiding behind it. “We don’t have to talk all about that right now. What’s on your mind?” There is always more. 

“I’m thinking about Dad now.” He points a stiff finger outside to the sidewalk where he watched the family just moments ago. 

A shrug rises to the surface, and May knows she doesn’t have to hide it. “Makes sense that talking about relationships and friendships would make you think about him.”

“Mum called me and told me that she needed help fixing an electrical problem in the house. I was going to walk her through it, but he took the phone and hung it up because he said he could do it himself.”

May simply waits. 

“I didn’t offer to come and do it in person because I think I know what would happen next. I’d fix it, of course, but he’d be waiting and looking right over my shoulder. This way not that; stupid choices; things that I don’t bother wanting to hear anymore. It’s like you said about projecting. He wants to believe certain things, but you never shake so much when you aren’t drinking all the time.” 

“I wonder when was the last time that you saw your mother.” She says, thinking again of Jemma and the baby. A quick glance at the clock tells her that she’ll need to go soon, once he’s finished with the story. 

“It’s been a while yet. A couple of months, honestly.” 

She bets that his mother misses him. She probably thinks about the way he used to look when he was a toddler, splay-legged on the floor surrounded by toys--blocks--probably, from what she knows about him. It’s a painted picture. He’s got that brown color hair that she knows was lightning blonde when he was younger without even having to ask. 

“--feeling guilty about what limits I have to set.” He ends a small speech and May curses herself for not listening again. She knows better than that.

Knowing that he’ll continue on if she holds her tongue, she waits. 

“But what you said about boundaries. That’s hard to reconcile with that feeling of beholdenness. How do I smash the two together?” He’s looking at her with doe eyes. Timid. That same little boy she saw before in her mind’s eye. 

She crosses her legs mindfully when he does the same. As clever as he is, he’s never picked up on her mirroring. “Healthy boundaries aren’t easy. If they were, then we would all have them. Sometimes it’s easier to let people walk all over you, but when that crushes your self-esteem the way that your dad does, we must decide which is going to be better for our brains.”

“Fighting or waiting for the wailing to stop.” He says reluctantly. 

“The part that hurts the least is sometimes also the part that does the most damage.” She puts the book down onto her desk and leans forward to look into his eyes. “This is a choice that you get to make.”

“I’m tired of choices.”

“So am I, sometimes.” She thinks of the past year she’s spent waiting on one person or another to make choices, to move qi from one hand to the next.

They sit together and wait, listening to May’s white noise machine as it hums beside the door.

“I need time to think about that. Again,” Fitz says this while he leans back into his chair. Often, this is what he says, but he doesn’t always come back to that conversation, especially when the stakes are so high and the problem involves his parents. 

“Want to talk about anything else?” She asks, and she watches as he looks to the clock the way that he usually does when she asks that question because he knows that means things are coming to an end.

He considers, he fidgets, and he chews the side of his mouth. “Do you think I should try and talk to that girl? Spend… more time with her?”

“Just think about what we talked about, earlier. With the nurturing, I mean. I’m not going to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. You’re a capable person.”

He almost laughs, the good sport.

“I know you were hoping to get out of having to make a choice there.” A smirk grabs hold of her. “Too bad, am I right?”

“Okay. Two Options. One: I decide not to nurture this friendship and it doesn’t grow. Two is that I do try to nurture it and I get rejected.” He considers the window once more. He’s been rejected plenty of times. What is once more?

* * *

  
  


It’s not until he’s standing before the mirror in his restroom that he starts to worry again. At his side, Smudge the cat has claimed the territory of Fitz’s right foot and is unlikely to depart without some squirming, but he’s not got the energy to move him. It’s settled, he decides. He’ll just let the cat loose fur all over his trousers leg. He examines himself at face value and knows that there’s nothing to it; he’ll just brush his teeth and fix his tangle of hair and either she’ll think nicely of him or not, and this is the part he’s practiced: no matter what she thinks, it’s only her business and none of his. 

Jemma agreed to meet him on the rooftop bar that rests upon one of those new hotels that keep popping up all over town. Neither of them had ever been, but it sounded nice enough and not too formal and if they want, there are drinks, so maybe he won’t be too nervous the whole time they’re out. It was a surprise that she had accepted his invitation to go anywhere, he decided, so if she didn’t want to stay then it was still a success. That’s what he told himself. 

Air tinged with the slightest smell of mint waved him on as he locked the heavy door behind him and headed off toward the bar. He watched his own shoes as he moved forward, pacing himself so as not to slip on any of the loose pieces of sidewalk that nested within other fragmented concrete homes. Just as expected, Smudge’s fur leaves nothing to be desired all over his clothing. Except for a lint-roller. 

It’s a struggle not to worry that he’s going to fail. She might realize that he’s a bit of a loser and decide not to talk to him anymore, just like the last couple of attempts he’s made. Those lads weren’t worth it anyway, though, since they didn’t even know the difference between a good beer and pisswater.

_ [On my way!] _ His mobile phone buzzes and he knows he should be breathing a sigh of relief, but it’s all he can to to avoid choking on his heart, which has transferred into his throat for some reason.

_ [Great. Me too.] _ He types back and shoves the device back into his pocket. It doesn’t take him long to arrive, and he scans the rooftop for signs of his friend(?), but she’s not there yet, so he orders a drink and chooses a table by the railing he’s surprised is even empty until he realizes that it’s Tuesday. At 5:30. 

“I’m so sorry I’m late. Got into a bit of traffic over on Patton.” She admits, and she pulls him into a quick and unexpected hug. “What did you order?” 

“A mojito.” He knows this isn’t probably what he’s supposed to say, but the mint had gotten him thinking while he was at the bar and he ran with it. Besides, it’s nobody else’s business either. May says that if he continues to tell himself that their opinions don’t matter, that he will eventually condition his brain. It makes sense. 

“That sounds delicious.” She says, and she plops a glass of ice water down on the table across from him before taking her seat. In the brief blow of wind that accompanies her, her cardigan flutters like a butterfly’s wing before lifting off, looking impossibly soft and just as fragile. “Did you come from work? Have a nice day?”

“Was alright. How about you?” He takes a sip of his drink and waits for her to answer, really hoping that she’ll take the lead.

And she does. Her mouth twists to the side and she begins on the outline of her day with her eyes bright and her ears perked. Jemma tells him about the recipe for bread she tried that morning and how she finally succeeded in finding the public library without her roommate’s help and about how well her paper did last she turned one in. With enthusiasm, she finishes her story with her smile wrapped around the pale green straw that is stuck in her glass.

“You normally don’t talk as much on the phone,” he says once she’s finished, but that smile falls and he turns beet-colored and feeling dreadful. “I don’t mean it in a bad way, I swear. I mean-- I mean that it’s nice.”

“Okay,” she concedes. In a long pull, she finishes her water and eyes the bar. “Do you think they have any pineapple?” 

“Course!” he jumps while he crosses the rooftop to the bartender’s area and asks for a refill of whatever she had with a long pointer finger. What an idiot. “Oh! And some pineapple if you have any.” 

Fitz turns back toward where his companion is sitting alone and wishes he’d done better. He’s going to have to learn how to think before he speaks. As the bartender leans over their fridge and plinks a pair of sugar cubes into her drink, he gets an idea. 

“You like fruit?” He asks as he hands her the glass. 

It an obvious question. “Who doesn’t?” She asks, taking another long sip of her sugar water. Maybe she is made of syrup and that is the reason she can stomach something like that.

“Is pineapple your favorite? Have you ever had a piece of dragonfruit?” 

She shakes her head.

“My mum used to make this tart that had dragonfruit and these little slivers of mango.” He can imagine it. It was a rare treat that she made, and he remembers it most clearly when he thinks back to his ninth birthday when it was just the two of them and she listened to him babbling on about some concept that she was light years away from understanding. “I bet you’d have liked it.”

“It’s the strangest looking fruit,” she offers with conviction.

“Yeah, and it tastes like pure sugar. As someone who drinks sugar-water, I imagine it’d be a fast favorite.” He laughs lightly while he takes his seat across from her again. “Are you sure you weren’t raised by hummingbirds?” 

“Certain.” A chuckle trills through her entirely, even strumming through her fingers, which sit patiently on the table as though there is nothing in the world that she could hide. “You said you’ve never been here before?” Her searching eyes cast light over the mountains in the distance, slowly taking in each shadow hiding between them. From far away, it is easy to pick out the rock candy-colored layers of the Blue Ridge, but up close, it is all green and bright like christmas lights. 

“Never,” he admits as he takes another sip of his drink and feels the subtlety of the taste on his tongue. But he wanted to come. He’s glad that she was willing to join him. What a sad state it would be for him to come alone to view something that is meant for a couple--a group. He means group.

“Maybe you could send me the recipe for your Mum’s tart. I’d like to try it if I could ever find the time to bake something other than bread.” 

A small prick of a grin hounds at him, and it’s a fool’s errand for him to keep it at bay. Unsuccessful, he knows. “Sounds like a plan, though I can’t see what’s in it for me if you don’t let me have a slice as well.” 

She tilts her head in a familiar way and the wind pushes wisps of caramel hair around the back of her neck. “Of course!” The exclamation seems unplanned.

“What are your plans for the weekend?”

“Oh, the usual. Mounds of schoolwork to keep me busy, dinner with my aunt and uncle.”

“From here?”

“They moved here long ago. Not proper relatives, but as good as.” How she gets through her sentences without picking at her napkin, he’s unsure. “What about your family?”

Oh, he remembered liking when she asked questions, but he isn’t too keen on them now, not when they’re so much like this. Next she’ll want to know if he has brothers or sisters. “Just me and Mum. Dad’s around for her sometimes.”

“That’s nice,” she says.

“Not really, but tell me about your family.” He bites the inside of his cheek hoping that this is quick enough and that she will move over this moat directly.

“It’s been a while since I saw them. They’re very kind, but I suppose for the most part, we all stay to ourselves. No siblings, but I think that’s for the best. Mum and Dad enjoy each other and their time isn’t too split between us. Me and my cousins, I mean.” 

He mumbles an affirmative. 

“I see Smudge has marked you today,” Jemma points at his trousers. 

“He gets jealous,” Fitz says, hoping she doesn’t catch him in his fib. The cat is good company, but his personality is slight. “He heard that we were going to see the whole of the mountains and it just burnt him up.”

When Jemma smiles, her eyes pillow together in the outside corners in a way that can only be described as comfortable. “I’m jealous of him--”

Fitz interrupts before he even knows he’s doing it, and once the words fly from his mouth, he wishes he could rein them back in so he doesn’t sounds like a fool, “Oh, you’d like to rub up against my trousers, too?” 

She gives him a look that manages to shrink him down to the size of a mouse’s foot. “No, I mean that I’d love to have a cat as well.” The look on her face is icy; she stabs the sugar cube at the bottom of her glass with her straw. 

“I’m sorry. It was a joke. I feel like maybe I’m doing this all wrong and I want you to know that it wasn’t meant to be in poor taste. Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t mean it in that way?” Cut the crap, he tells himself. Do better.

“I can only speak for myself, but I know that it’s hard to make friends.”

“How do you know I’m trying to make friends?” The questions reaches a ledge and trips from his tongue.

“You told me so. Just a couple of days ago when we were having tea.” An innocent expression is all Jemma. 

He nods and winces again as he struggles to keep his palm from his face. Nothing more satisfying than a smack, he thinks, just right between his eyes. 

“But what I mean is that I understand. And I know that sometimes our mouths speak before we explicitly process something. All that sensory reflex and all.” There is a scientist in her. She crosses one leg over the other and leans against her open hand peacefully, a woman unbothered by Fitz’s stammering. If only he’d been so lucky to meet her a year ago. 

“Thank goodness someone does.” He says as he lifts his mojito in a private toast. 

They chat about the subtleties of language for a while. Is it surprising that he has met someone who is so expert from stopping to help her find her way to a restaurant in downtown or are they all like that, he wonders. Imagining that even the bartender could be a literary master, this is beyond him, he’s sure. It’s embarrassing that he should be so set against each stranger who crosses his path and this is undoubtedly why he has moved all the way to Asheville and had yet to make friend other than the stinky tabby he leaves at home. Though they have moved far past the conversation about him, Fitz finds his train of thought circling back. “Maybe you should come and meet him one day. Smudge, I mean. I’m not a good cook, but he really only cares for canned food anyway. You’re welcome to visit, but maybe you should bring the tart.”

“If you send the me recipe.” She counters without flinching. 

They argue the ethics of altering his mum’s instructions on the food, and Jemma tells him that she would never dare a substitution, at least not the first time she prepares a dish from someone else’s kitchen. He argues that Mum didn’t invent it. Probably swiped it from a library cookbook and that changing the recommended fruits and maybe adding in a strawberry or two is not sacrilege, but innovation. She concedes to him finally. 

Perhaps not strawberry, she says. “If the dragon fruit is really as sweet as you say, maybe the best counter to that would be something more tart. Cranberry?”

“Oh! You don’t know what you’re talking about!” He pokes in good humor before reaching over to nudge her with the crook of his arm. 

Fitz doesn’t know what to make of the way she avoids his eyes and smiles keenly into her palm, but he sees it. His body buzzes like a hive of bees. 

“It’s been wonderful to get to know you, outside of the texting world. I’m sure most people think that doesn’t count anyway.”

“Do you think it counts? To become friends with someone who you only rarely see anyway?” She asks, words in fine print in the script they share.

A shrug finds its was to his surface. “Who knows. I suppose that if it doesn’t sound too bad to you, I would just take what I could get.”

This, it seems, is the answer she wanted to hear. She drinks down the rest of her glass and sets the thing aside. Around them, hanging lamps have turned on and they flicker through the windy bar. Whatever could have been seen of the mountains has shrunken into blackness. 

“I’ve got to go. Daisy has been texting me to tell me she’s circling the block and I can only let her do that for a couple more minutes.” Without ado, she stands and shrugs on her cardigan, a thin white thing that she’s lucky to have brought.

“Should I walk you down?” Fitz asks hastily, drinking down the last of his watered-down cocktail.

“I’ll be alright. Thanks for meeting with me.” She pulls him into a hug, soft and simple and he swears that before taking off, she squeezes his arm just above the elbow. Or was that a trick of the rum? 


	5. Chapter 5

As she looks at herself in the mirror, with Daisy behind her peeking over her shoulder, she wants to moan. Turned to the side, the silhouette of the baby is evident in every sense of the word, but she dare not say a thing. 

“It says here that the baby is the size of an orange.” Daisy reads from her mobile phone.

“Sounds about right.” Jemma mutters, taking off to rifle through her closet again to find something that sits a little looser on her belly. The sundresses have been fun and it is scalding outside as they dive into summer, but they are simply no longer effective. A quick glance at the calendar helps her none, only confirms that it is not yet Autumn and she cannot hide under a thick jumper. 

However, once Autumn comes, she will be steadily easing into a human with a belly the size of a watermelon and at that point, the jumpers are unlikely to help, either.

“And it says that in a few weeks, if we get lucky, we’ll get to know if the baby is a boy or a girl. Or both or neither. Not that it’s any of our business.” She chews on the edge of her thumbnail, clearly reading on about genitals and testing. “Are you having an amnio?” 

“If your parents want. I told them that I’m willing to do whatever testing they felt was appropriate. It didn’t sound like they were very interested, though.” Jemma answers. She pulls out a wavy looking cotton duster that may pair well with the black sheath dress she normally brings out for winter. It’s not thick, but it’s long and lacks shape so she should be able to make it work.

Daisy takes a seat cross-legged on the bed and inches her toes underneath the throw Jemma leaves on the edge. It’s been cold in the flat, thanks to the extra window unit that she insisted on having since the fetus makes her overheat at night. “Hey, did you tell your classmates about all of this?”

“Rightfully not.” She winces at the thought.

“I just wonder because I know that you’re probably going to have to meet them all at some point.”

“Not until the winter. Unless I decided to take some time off.” This is a new admission, and as she says it, Jemma looks to her friend to see if this arouses suspicion. It does.

“Why would you take time off? That is very un-jemma of you.”

She needs a deep breath before she can answer. “I’m not… I’m not doing well in my classes.” 

“What the hell does that mean?” Daisy’s mouth forms a hard O, wide enough that it is a surprise that her tongue doesn’t ravel from between her teeth and curl up like a dying millipede on the rug.

Jemma answers as she shrugs out of her pyjamas and into the new clothes, one hand on the frame of her closet door to keep from falling over. Sure the baby is only the size of an orange, but somehow, her balance is all over the place. “I think my focus has just been elsewhere.”

“Okay,” Daisy says. She stands up and crosses the room to help her friend style what is likely going to become her go-to outfit. “So you you mean the pregnancy or this new guy.”

“He’s hardly a new guy. And we’re only talking on the phone.”

“Have you realized yet?”

Jemma knows she’s falling for the bait. “Realized what?”

“That you like him.”

“What?”

“People don’t text their friends that way--and they don’t call them that often either.”

A belly laugh erupts from Jemma’s core. “Daisy! That is laughable.” She shakes her head, moves on to examining the new outfit in the mirror, draping the fabric that hangs below her womb to see how much of a difference the cut of the dress may make. Her heart falls. This new garb may buy her a week until the baby is the size of an avocado.

“Okay, well you say that, but tell me this: does he send you a message to say goodnight?” 

Jemma nods. Of course he does. Otherwise she would keep texting him and would probably just wake him up. It’s only the polite thing to do. She thinks of the night before, when he stayed up much later than usual, live-texting his thoughts on the documentary that they were watching together from their respective apartments. Turns out Fitz was a massive fan of monkeys.

“This, uh,” A traitorous look crosses her face, and she clicks her tongue to draw Jemma’s attention. “The week-by-week also says that your libido is probably surging.” 

Okay, well, she can’t deny that, but she also doesn’t have to acknowledge it, so instead of answering, Jemma only gives her the stink-eye. 

“I’m just the messenger relaying to you what this fabulous website is already reporting on.” She tucks the phone away under the blanket.

“I’m not trying to think about dating or sleeping with anyone. Nothing like that. I just, okay, maybe I think he’s fit. That point is that I am already unable to really focus on my schoolwork and if I can’t do that, then I certainly can’t give any man the right amount of attention.”

“Whatever.”

“I’m going to hop in the shower. It’s a thousand kelvins in this room.”

Daisy stands up and pads on over to the closest air conditioning unit to knock it up a notch. “Yeah yeah. I’m going to go through my clothes from before I started working out and I’ll bring you anything that might fit.” She promises, but before she can even move onto that, she takes a moment to flip through Jemma’s texts from this new mysterious gentleman. She’d hoped to get a look at him when they met for drinks, but had been disappointed that she wanted to keep him a complete secret.

She engages the photo gallery, looking for dirt and finds something else. Instead of pictures of nasty body parts that she expects, there is one single photo of a man, fully dressed and standing nervously in front of his mirror, not smiling, but almost smirking, as though he is hiding a very good secret. He looks… the word is nice. He looks like a kind person. Daisy studies the picture and can tell that he is the kind of man that would let a five-year-old win at checkers. It’s good dirt. 

She scrolls through a little further to see if there’s anything else to note, but sees only pictures that she has seen before, photos of her and Jemma with their cheeks pressed together by their wide smiles. Knowing that’s probably the only other thing she’ll see, she moves on to the text messages.

_ [The best thing about having a cat is that I’m able to lie about where the hair comes from. No one has caught on that I’m actually a werewolf.] _

_ [I was surprised you didn’t wear that pink dress you like when we met up last night.] _

_ [Good luck on your exam today!] _

And  _ [ _ _ Goodnight. Talk later.] _ Are all messages that have been sent to her best friend and all of them have been responded to with emojis of smiling cats or 100s or various other reasonably happy paraphernalia. 

It is once Jemma’s turned on that shower that the show begins, and Daisy answers the ringing cell. “Who is it?” Jemma asks asks over the roaring thrum of the shower, expecting May to be checking in because she was asking for a belly photo anyway.

“It’s Fitz?” Daisy calls, pretty sure that she has parsed out who he is from the messages. picking up the phone and resting it against her ear without hesitation.

“Hey, Jemma.” He answers, too casually.

“This is her roommate. She’s in the shower right now.” What excellent timing. This is something she can work with.

“Alright. Have her call me back when she has the chance. I have a question about the--”

And Daisy interrupts. It’s part of what she does best. It’s one of her many strengths that she is sure came from her dad. “Would you like to come to dinner tomorrow?” she asks but thinks better of it; she can’t give Jemma enough time to call it off. “Or tonight? Maybe tonight would be better. Are you a vegetarian or anything?” She lets the questions off loose and fast; it is a theory she frequently tests with men and usually, it’s effective.

“What? I--yeah. Okay.” 

Success again. The theory holds true. “Great. Do you have our address?” 

He tells her no, but without even missing a beat, she has already texted it to the same number.

“Great. We’ll see you around seven. No wine, please.”

“Oh--a-alright. See you then.” He hangs up, evidently not one for too much chatter. It makes sense, if Jemma likes him. 

“Hey, Jemma?” Daisy asks once she’s got him off the phone. She peeks around the door into the bathroom. “Fitz is coming for dinner. That dress you just pulled out is clean, right?”

Her answer is an exclamation. “What the hell?!” And the water shuts off.

* * *

  
  
  


The apartment has never looked so clean, at least not that Jemma can remember, since she moved in after her notorious garbage-slinging roommate. And this isn’t for lack of trying, she notes (even to herself in her head). For some reason that is likely related to Fitz having been invited to dinner, Daisy has not only scoured each surface of the kitchen, but she has wiped down the entire bathroom too, citing ammonia as the reason that Jemma was not allowed to help her. All of the dishes are done, and even the sponge has been replaced for something fresher and less smelly. Not too soon as Jemma can smell it all the way in her bedroom sometimes. 

“Hey! Come stir this salad for me!” Daisy calls from another room and once Jemma enters it, she can see that the living room as well has been folded and cleaned and vacuumed. It looks as organized as her bedroom and she can’t complain since she’s been too tired for housekeeping anyway. It’s a strange thing to see that something has been stirred within her roommate, and there is a nagging sense that either she is trying to push Jemma into this man’s arms or that she has her own fishing bait out.

The knock on the door comes early though, before she is satisfied with the way she looks in the mirror, not that it matters since she was going to be nearing the size of a small house soon so there would be no romancing. It wouldn’t be logical anyway. The rule of evolution is that a woman who bears a child is much more likely to be passed on since she cannot be impregnated twice at the same time--not that she wanted to be impregnated--that sounded awful from where she was standing. She could stand a few more years before becoming an incubator the next time around. She takes a deep breath to refocus herself before answering the door.

He has some of the brightest eyes she’s ever seen before. Almost similar to when Phil had been confirmed that she egg had taken, that there was indeed a baby growing in there.

“Hi, welcome.” She says, glad she didn’t step all over herself.

“Hey, thanks for having me.” He responds while he hands her the five daisies that he must have bought from the grocery store. “She said no wine,” he lowers his voice to a whisper, “but I wouldn’t have even thought to bring a host gift without her saying something.”

“These are wonderful. Thank you.” She leads him into the kitchen where her roommate is still pretending to slave over a hot stove, when they both know Daisy loves cooking. 

As Jemma cuts the flowers and adds them into a jar of water, they introduce themselves to each other, shaking hands, making comments about the saffron smell of the kitchen and the techno music that Daisy swears she needs in order to focus while she cooks.

“Surprised you two don’t care for wine. I know it’s a stereotype, but I thought birds love it.” He shares after he agrees that he’d love a beer and while Jemma uncaps it for him. “But thinking on it now, you probably prefer a little something sweeter anyway, don’t you, Jemma?”

“Well, she--” Daisy starts before she is rudely interrupted by someone who is not nearly as good at it as she.

“I’m not much for drinking anyway. A big fan of water, really.” Jemma fakes a smile as she heads for the kitchen sink to refill her glass with too much animation. “Lubricates the joints, you know.”

And her roommate can barely stifle her laugh. “Anyway. If you wanted to head into the living room to have a seat at the table, I’m almost finished and I can’t concentrate with all of you in here.” 

“There’s only two of us,” Fitz remarks with what seems like a defensiveness in him, judging from the way his stance shrinks. 

Jemma thinks she has never seen a look like that cross Daisy’s face. A mixture of indignation, petulance, and what is probably confusion over how someone could have misrepresented what she was saying. 

“Sure. it’s fine, Daisy. We’ll go out of here and leave you to that wonderful cooking,” she says with a forced calm about her. It’s an odd feeling to see both she and Fitz in the same room, maybe like two asteroids colliding in space. As she turns and heads out, he obediently follows behind her, hands in his pockets.

“Have any trouble finding us?” She asks in politeness as they walk and she paws through the apartment trying not to make too much noise. The thing about the old apartments that are downtown is that they have wonderful basements that must be hollow for fire code, and that translates to shaking and noisy footsteps that make anyone feel like they are as big as a rhinoceros. Not helpful. Not when you look in the mirror and already feel as though you are as big as said rhino.

He shakes his head, she sees. “You’re closer to me than I imagined you were. Just four or five blocks, so it was a nice short walk.”

Oh, she can feel her face fall. That close? So soon, when she is as big as an African Elephant, he would be able to see her cover over the entire block as he took strolls around the neighborhood. She scratches the walls of her brain desperately looking for something to say to keep him from catching her gaping like a mental patient. “That’s nice. Have you seen the bears?”

“No, not this summer.” He answers, seemingly unaware that she is standing there slack-jawed. 

“Ah. They got into our bins yesterday and when Daisy left for work, there was rubbish all over the yard.” And there was, including several of her less flattering school papers. “The poor thing had to pick all of it back up.”

“You should have heard me whining,” Daisy saves the day, carrying a rotisserie chicken that she pretended earlier she was able to cook, before putting the thing in the center of the table like the viewpiece from a victorian bakery. 

Ever gentle, Fitz looks ecstatic as he takes a seat. “That smells fantastic.” His eyes grow to the size of goose eggs.

Jemma laughs, this time unable to hold it back, and her two companions turn their entire bodies to watch her, only in time for her to snap her mouth shut. “Sorry, it’s just that she bought that ready-made at the grocer.”

With a smirk, her roommate slaps her with a napkin. “I could cook it if I felt like spending that kind of time, this was a pretty last-minute rush job.” As she takes her second trip back into the kitchen, Jemma winks at Fitz as though to say she couldn’t agree. 

“It still looks good and I have a feeling that I’m still going to enjoy it,” Fitz says as he stabs a piece of the chicken to pull it onto his plate. “You never told me how your last test went?”

“What?” Jemma asks with her heart aflutter for a moment before she realizes that with her tiny little bump hidden underneath the table where they’re sitting, he can’t see her, and she’s pretty sure that he still hasn’t figured out that she’s carrying a baby. Right?

“It was cell division, right? I can’t remember.” He reaches for another plate on the table and scoops a portion of green beans onto his dish. 

Jemma swallows, surprised that it sounds so much like a gulp. “Yeah. It-it went okay.”

But it is Daisy who spills the beans as she walks in again, this time carrying a tray of sliced bread that smells like heaven. “Jemma, you bombed that test. You showed me your grade. It did not go okay.”

Oh dear god. Daggers form underneath the student’s eyebrows.

“I’m sorry to hear that. I know you studied a lot.” Fitz comforts, already into his food and eating like a man who hasn’t seen a chicken in the last year. 

“I suppose it’s the stress. With the move and things.” 

“Makes sense.” Daisy reaches for her own bread and butters it generously. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Fitz.”

With a tilted eyebrow, he looks up at her, his mouth still mostly full.

“I’ve got to go. I have a date planned, so I’m going to head out,” she explains quickly and stands up, grabs her handbag, and hugs Jemma. “You two eat as much as you like. I’ll be home in a few hours.” Without another moment, she flees. 

In their home, without her, the air changes. The low light from the kitchen that radiates seems too intimate. The smell of rosemary and sage is an overwhelming clean. Between them, the space fills with sexual tension that Jemma is sure she is imagining since there are hormones to consider and likely, that’s all that she can attribute this to.

“Just the two of us, then.” Fitz swallows his last bite of food deliberately. 

“I feel like I’ve been set up.”

“I can’t speak for her and you know her much better than I do, but I think we have been.” He sits back in his chair. 

In this space, the size of her body seems enormous. She should tell him, if she knows what’s good for her. She should tell him and let him be angry if that’s what will happen, because the last month that the two of them have been talking has been nice and if things are going to be ruined, they should be now rather than later when they’ve become much closer as they are bound to.

“My cousin told me that sometimes girls have their friends do things like this.” He fidgets, hands twining with each other so lightly that he may not even notice. “Not to accuse, but if you wanted to have me alone, all you had to do was tell me.” A laugh drags up the side of Fitz’s mouth in a cruelly endearing gesture.

“I didn’t!” 

“Alright.” He says as he looks into the knotted wood of the dining table. “Do you want me to go?” 

“No!” the word flies from her mouth and her heartbeat seems to agree, as it goes faster. It’s been a little while since her last jog around the neighborhood, but that wouldn’t be too far off in terms of comparison, she thinks. “I--uh--do you like that series on the television? The one about undersea life.”

A deep breath. “I do.”

“Could we watch? While we eat, I mean.” She asks.

Fitz nods. Dusk has settled around the skin of his temples, invitingly. 

An urge to graze her nose there is enticing. In a set of scales, what is the heavier? The desire to touch the small of his back or to shake his hand? As she wonders, and as she flips on the telly and sets the show up for them, the seed starts. At first, it is a scratch at the window like a gentle reminder that she is a woman, but this is an orchard on fire. In a daze, she turns from the space where her eyes have been set and she regrets having turned off the aircon at Daisy’s request. Silently, she stands to turn it back on and embarrassingly notices that her hormones have taken another turn.

Fitz chews while he watches, unbothered by the silence or the two of them alone. 

“Did you have a good day at work yesterday?”

He swallows again, the last in a long set of them, and pushes his plate to the side. “I’ll help with those later.” It’s a quiet request, but not one that she finds surprising. A conscientious fellow, she knows. “I think every problem client we have called in this week. Probably trying to get in their half-baked ideas into the system before they go off on summer vacations.” He stretches his hands behind his head, exposing the breadth of his shoulders in the sandy color linen shirt he’s worn over.

To feel that linen in her hand. A cold chill runs through her. “So no?”

“It was busy, but maybe that’s not so bad. I like talking to other people who call in. Mr. Ryan isn’t a pleasant sort of man to talk to, so if my ear is busy…“ He leads off.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” She wonders if she is or if she’s not simply busy thinking about how his wrist might feel between her fingers. 

“‘S all right. I have good insurance and a resume builder, so I’m not allowed to worry about it too much.” 

“What’s your name?” She asks next, finding each question that she has lined in queue.

He smiles and turns pink. “It’s Leo.” 

“Leo.”

The blush deepens into the color of a rosé at her repetition of the word and she can tell that he likes it.

It’s enough to make her need a change of clothes to see that cross his sweet face. “I like it. Why don’t you use it?” 

“You can call me that.” He says. “It’s my therapist’s opinion that I should let someone. You’re really the only person I talk to very much, so maybe that should be you.”

Her mouth feels full of honey. “Leo.” She says again.

He shakes his head and leans into his shoulders, almost doubling over in what has moved from flirting to something more like fear. “I shouldn’t talk about my therapist, should I?” But this isn’t a rhetorical, as he turns to look at her and melts the space between her thighs. 

It’s just hormones. She must repeat this to herself. The new adage. The new creed. “Daisy’s mom is a therapist. We’ve grown up around all of that sort of environment. Really, it’s healthy to have one.” 

“Do you really think so? Are you just saying that because you don’t want to rock the boat with me?”

“No.” She is clear with her words. “Maybe I should tell you a secret, too. Keep things level between us.” There are plenty. One: that she is carrying a baby for family friends who needed a very big favor. Two: that she likely will need to withdraw from the last class needed in order to get her next degree. Three: that sure, she does like him. Or an embarrassing one, if that is what it takes to get even: that she threw up on the sidewalks as soon as she got to The Blackbird after he gave her directions on the day they met.

“Spill the beans,” he says in mock excitement, going so far as to pause the television show.

There were options. All of them secrets. “As soon as you walked back to your office building on that day you gave me directions, I tripped and fell all over the ground.”

“I don’t feel that’s an even trade.” 

“You should have seen me,” Jemma lies. “I needed a therapist after what happened there.” Well, she did, but really for other reasons.

The two of them talk for an hour or so, sharing false secrets that aren’t worth keeping to themselves, such as Jemma spilling the family barbeque sauce recipe, which was baked beans sauce with added chili powder and hot pepper sauce. 

Finally, the roast chicken is exhausted and Fitz washes the dishes while Jemma packs away the rest of the things. It looks almost alright, the two of them together in the kitchen in a farce of domesticity, that Jemma wonders if she needs a break. Surely, Daisy had conivingly meant to leave the two of them alone to give them time to consider each other.

“Where’s the washroom?” He asks once he’d finished rinsing the last of the plates, wringing his hand out on the khaki-colored kitchen towel.

“This way,” she leads, knowing he is following here and wondering if he’s catching a look at her bum. It’s certainly grown since he last saw it. They parade through the livingroom and down the corridor into her bedroom, where she points to the open restroom door.

He’s just about to go in and she panics, wondering if something has been left out that may spill all of her actual secrets. “Hold it,” she almost shrieks. “Me first. I’ll be right out.” 

She walks in an closes the door with a loud sigh to take inventory of the things on her counter. True, she is as clean as a whistle as always, but there, right of the hand soap, a bottle of vitamins sits out. He might not have seen it if he wasn’t looking, but it’s the saying that dates use the restroom as an opportunity to sniff around. She takes the bottle and searches for a place to hide it, finally deciding that the only logical place is underneath the garbage bag in the rubbish bin, hidden there between the liner and the body. With a sigh, she notes to herself that she’ll have to disinfect the whole bottle before she can eat any of them again.

* * *

  
  
  


Knowing that she probably appears maniacal, she comes out of the bathroom trying to hide her blush. Come up with a reason, she tells herself. “This really is the cleanest washroom in the house, but I just needed to make sure there weren’t ladies things hanging around.”

Embarrassment creeps over his face and Jemma is glad that it appears to have worked. “Thanks,” he mumbles and closes the door behind him. 

Jemma takes a look at her own bedroom now, flogging herself for not having thought to look through that room either, but on the surface, things look to be in order. Her bed is made neatly and there is nothing on the surfaces, a point of pride for herself and there is so little to dust when it comes time for season chores. Her little bottle of hand cream, a photo of her parents in a thin wire picture frame, and her valet tray are all immaculate and organized. She separates her jewelry by color though she wears the pieces very rarely. The watches, all unfolded and lying beside each other, are the only things that get regular use. 

She considers the plants on the window sill, which all look perky enough from the light. It was a worry when she’d first moved in with Daisy that they had picked the wrong bedrooms and that the little chaps wouldn’t like the morning sun. Moving the curtain to the side, it’s clear that the sun has faded long ago, heading off for another part of the world. How long had she and Fitz really been talking, she wonders.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a room this clean before,” Fitz admits as he exits the restroom and turns off the light.

“Yes, I’m very particular about things. An opposite to Daisy, she’s very loose about where her belongings should go.”

Fitz takes a seat on the edge of her bed and combs his fingers through the fur of her blanket in the same manner most do when they come in for a tour of the apartment. Aside from the wall of plants, it seems to be the most popular.

“Do you like it?” She gestures with both hands and feels like a fool, though he isn’t likely to be thinking anything about her habitat other than knowing he is in it.

“It looks like a space you would live in.” He says, leaning back on his hands and taking a look around, a nervous flamingo in a pack. “I’m most interested in that, though,” he says as he points to her poster of the Dumbbell Nebula. 

“Yes, thank you. I love the colors,” she admits, still feeling silly. In the effort to make herself sound more knowledgeable, she continues though she’s not sure any talk of astronomy makes her seem any smarter--but maybe if she can come off as less of a dilettante, she says, “It’s in the constellation---”

“Volpecula,” he finishes.

“Yeah.”

“My mother and I used to spend nights out in the countryside with the telescope and that was one of the first things we saw each night. Almost like an omen.”

She feels something bead on her eyelid and she feels so silly that she wipes it away before he could see. “You did?”

“Yeah. We’re big fans.”

“I wish we could see them out here,” she says as she pulls the curtain away again, revealing only the inky blue of the night and the reflection of expensive summer homes populating the mountainside.

“I do too, sometimes. There’s so much light pollution out this way. I hear almost everyone chat about how they moved out to the mountains to feel closer to nature, but that is nature too, and it is the amount of people that take us farther away.”

It’s almost beautiful, but full of bitterness as well. “Why did you come here?” She asks, tucking the night back away behind the pale purple curtain.

He chews the corner of his mouth before answering, what has become known just through the one night as his considering face. “Joined my mum when she moved out here since it was just her and I for so long, but last year I found my own place. It sounds awful to say out loud, that I lived with my mum for so long, but she really needed me.”

“You’re right, that’s what all the boys say.” She laughs just a little, but knows when he looks at her that he knows she’s not poking fun at him.

“How about you? You’re even newer than I am, so what’s your story?”

“Oh, nothing, really. Just wanted to be closer to Daisy and her family. They’re pretty close to me as well.” It was mostly a truth. 

He lay down against the mattress, boldly, and held his hands with fingers entwined on his chest. “It sounds nice that you all are so close.”

Unsure whether it was still hormones, a thought occurred to Jemma that she should sit there beside him and she did. The freshly cleaned blanket that their bodies adorn puffs as she sits down, and the smell of orange blossoms is renewed in her bedroom. It was a natural choice, not because she figured Fitz would like it or that she even assumed that they would be in that position with time, but because it was one of the only smells that didn’t make her feel ill in the mornings, no matter how strong it was. She’d taken to eating an orange each day for breakfast along with her slice of dry toast.

He turned to her almost immediately after she sat and without waiting or nervousness, he reached a hand to the side of her face and kissed her cheek. “I’m not stupid enough to believe that you’re completely innocent in Daisy’s plan to leave the two of us alone with a delicious dinner and a few hours of one-on-one time.” He admitted with a voice stronger than she had expected from him, but as firm as that voice was, he did not push. Instead, he released her cheek and lay back down in the position where he had begun.

“You may be disappointed to know that I had no part in the plan, though I didn’t think it was worth throwing a wrench in either.” It shocked her only a little that as she lay down beside him and curled against the inside of his arm, head on the bicep that she had squeezed the other night, he allowed her. Welcomed her, even.

“You’re interested in me?” He asked. 

“Do you think you’re suave?” She laughed, meeting his eyes and calculating the amount of time it would take to reach out and kiss him back, but on the mouth. To reach out and tickle the line of his jaw with the tip of her nose.

“I don’t think it,” he jokes, and he reaches for her of his own accord, brushing against her mouth quite gently, smelling of rosemary and almonds from the dinner they just shared. He presses on her top lip in a way she doesn’t normally feel with a man, especially not the first time. 

She leans into him further, stopping when the swell of her belly touches his hip and jerks back as though she’d been electrocuted. “Sorry,” she begins before he can, because there is a look of regret on his face and between his eyebrows. 

“I didn’t mean to bother you, I just, I read the signals wrong. I’m so sorry.” He sits up straight as a statue, hands now flat on the tops of his thighs as though he is afraid he might touch her accidentally.

“You didn’t--It’s fine. I know the signals that I was letting off, I wanted you to, I just didn’t realize until it was happening… I wasn’t sure… It’s just not the best time.”

There is pause before he repeats some of her words and she wonders if he is holding it against her, “Not the best time.” 

She sits up beside him and makes sure that she has his eyes. “It’s not you.” 

Pain is evident in his face, and she knows she has hit something much deeper with the shovel of her nerve. “I fancy you.” She admits hoping that she can repair the bridge so easily broken with one misplaced reflex. “I’m not lying about that or the timing.” She reaches for his hand and squeezes it there as it sits on top of his thigh, which has grown hot. 

He seems to squeeze back for a moment, she thinks, before standing and smoothing his shirt and trousers. “I like you as well. I just think I should go and let you enjoy the rest of your evening. It’s getting late and I shouldn’t be out wandering the neighborhood when the bears are probably out, too.” He heads for the door, but lingers when she doesn’t get up to go, and she thinks there’s a chance he’s waiting for her to change her mind.

“What about dessert, Leo?” She asks, hoping that he will feel her tasting his name, and yes, his shoulders fall less like the ending of a friendship and more like acceptance.

The nod nearly wracks him.

“I usually just have a glass of water with maybe a little bit of maple syrup in it, since it’s healthier, but if I remember correctly, Daisy keeps an emergency chocolate bar in the hall closet.”

His laugh is raucous and she cannot contain her giggle at the absurdity of it. 

“I don’t lie,” she exclaims in earnest when she reaches for the tip top of the closet against the inside of the door frame and pops off a candybar with a piece of adhesive tape stuck on the back. Leading him onto the porch of their apartment unit, she unwraps it and give him a generous half, though she could surely eat all of it in a second or three. 

Without talking, they eat the sweet just an arms length from each other.

“Are you going to hold the kiss against me?” He asks like a child asking Father Christmas if his naughtiest moment is damning him come the all-important eve.

She runs inventory of the situation once more and replays it in her head--she was always good at that. In another life, it would have been without consequence and the two of them would have had sex right there on the furry blanket he’d raked his hands through earlier in the night. “I can’t ‘hold it against you’ when you didn’t do anything wrong. I wanted you to kiss me and you did.”

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

By 10:00 am, Fitz is already sure that this day cannot get any worse, but he is proven wrong only fifteen minutes later. Some reason unbeknownst to him, Mr. Ryan had come back into the office on the warpath and Fitz was the other other person in the building. Not even his partner remained, and that put Fitz right in the bullseye of his target.

“It would be nice if you were to call our appointments a few days before they were supposed to be here. Do you know how many people just didn’t show up to their appointments in the past month?”

It sounded benign, but this was a sign that somehow, these people deciding not to come when they were scheduled to was his fault. He had fallen into this trap before. “Yes, sir.” He said simply. Arguing that it was already policy to do that was not going to smooth down and ripples in the fabric.

“Saying ‘yes sir’ doesn’t say to me that you understand what I’m getting at. Do you--is-is are you calling them at all? Are they saying they’re coming and then not showing up?” Mr. Ryan said as he paced Fitz’s work area, the corner behind the bookcase.

“It’s already procedure to call twice, once a week before and once the day before.”

“So what I’m asking is if they’re lying about coming in.” Mr. Ryan’s eyes grew in size, from chocolate jewels to winter-coat buttons.

Fitz knew better than to call their clients liars. “I can’t say either way, sir, but I do know that--”

Mr. Ryan, with his hands on his hips, turns around in a tight circle where he stands, huffing and puffing dramatically as he does so. “So what are you going to do next?”

“I can call them three times, if you think that would work.”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. What do you think?”

Another trap lays out before him. Surely today is the day that he’s going to be sacked. It was only a matter of time and it’s going to be today. “Yes, I’m going to give that a try.”

“You know, you just--you don’t look like you care. Here’s some constructive criticism: you just nod your head and agree with everything I say. Are you even listening?” Mr. Ryan huffs next.

“Yes sir, I’m listening. I do agree with you about this.”

Without looking at him, the big bad boss heads back into his office to prepare for the next appointment, which is scheduled to begin in ten minutes. Clicking through the electronic calendar, Fitz notices that his boss has not scheduled any time for lunch between appointments, save for a fifteen minute block, which means: Fitz needs to order him a sandwich. No need to replay the same fiasco that took place during his second week when Mr. Ryan downright accused him of trying to sabotage business. He scrambles to get the order in quickly, but it’s set to arrive at the perfect time, so after rubbing the frustration out of his eyes for a moment, he turns back to the blueprint he’s been working at for the past two days only to put it away right after.

Nothing lately has been interesting, aside from the constant nagging. Once he’s checked in the next client, he shakes his hands out and runs his hands around his workspace, tidying up things that he doesn’t have to look at urgently and carefully rotates the plant that he keeps as close as possible to the window to encourage growth on a neglected side. After heading back into the kitchenette to grab a paper towel, he dusts each nook and cranny he can see and some that he must bend into an impossible angle to reach. The space looks clean enough, he decides as he tosses the paper out, but it still looks sad. Sitting in the chair is out of the question. At this point, all that does is triggers another bout of anxiety.

The sandwich arrives quickly enough and Fitz places it in a safe spot in the fridge, writes an email to Mr. Ryan about how he will be back at the end of his lunch hour, and heads out.

Rain clouds have obscured most of the mountains, he notices as he walks out, and against the dull grayish background, the leaves on their neighbor’s trees are an enlightened shade of orange and his mobile phone’s camera cannot do the image justice. Not worth sending to Jemma or Mum. Instead, he puts the thing away and stares at his feet as he braves the soggy walk to the nearest cafe.

The clinking sound of cups inside is lower than he is used to, and he wonders as he chooses his seat if he’s a million miles away of if the moody weather has made the other patrons gentler. It’s nothing new to him, having grown up in that very same sogginess, it really only looks more like home. He orders his favorite and pulls up at a table near the window made for two and wishes he’d brought a book to read in the meantime. Instead, he send Jemma another text, this time an offer for someone to proofread her latest paper, though he adds that he’s sure it’s perfect as an afterthought to keep her from reading into the offer incorrectly.

She hasn’t said yes to any of his offers for the past few weeks, which May says is suspicious behavior, but she does take his calls and even calls him sometimes, so he has to take her at face value. Sure, she’s complicated, but is that any of his business? Doesn’t he have his own set of strange things going on as well?

Once his food arrives, he stabs into his greens with a focused fork and eats while staring at the wall in front of him with it’s ugly vine-decorated wallpaper. The paper is sunbaked and faded, which strikes him a little odd when posed beside the drearily raining outside that pretended to welcome him. Usually, he orders the plate as carry off, but with the office being the warzone that it is, Mr. Ryan couldn’t pay him to eat his food there. He’d probably choke on it from the anxiety anyway.

A memory blazes in front of his eyes and obscures the ugly paper that adorns the walls: the week after Fitz started at the office and the new boss offered to take him out for lunch, only to find out that he didn’t mean paying for lunch and had chosen somewhere quite pricey that Fitz had to charge to a credit card in order to pay for. It set the scene, really. As he flashed back to the usual diner, he felt a wave of relief again. This, he could afford. This was better food anyway.

If Jemma was there, he could imagine her sitting across the table from him in the pink dress, she might successfully get his mind off of it. She would have gotten a salad, he’s sure, being the sort of woman she is, with a nice glass of iced tea. There would be a lemon dropped in, floating on top of the crushed bits of ice in her glass. He remembers how his mouth turned when she admitted she was a fan of that--and the sugar. A travesty, honestly. Even the queen would be disappointed.

Despite all of her talk, she’s yet to visit, but if she did, he reckons she’d like a film to watch. Maybe the two of them could sit in the living room with the lights turned down and something on--maybe not about animals mating or trying to kill each other that time. Maybe something with a rocketship or a time machine. Already, he can imagine the god-awful purring that the cat would do with the whole of his body in it; as though his very life depended on the neighbors hearing him vibrate.

As he thinks of this, he realizes that his priorities might be all wrong there. There are a plethora of other ideas that he has completely neglected. His mother has sent over her tart recipe and it hangs lonely in his email inbox waiting for him to pluck it out. He imagines them preparing the dish together in the kitchen, though he’s certain he’d make a real mess of it, cutting the fruits thin as coins and marrying them in the crust with bright colors like a Hindu ceremony. In the cafe, he stabs another bite from the plate, this time of potatoes that haven’t nearly enough gravy.

She sits before him, hair bobbing in a ponytail and downs a great deal of the tea, breaking to smile at him with all of her teeth. “How was your day?” She asks. Her fingernails stand out to him, curled around her silver fork. They are neatly kept and trimmed short with a pale pink lustre on them that is all cosmetic but looks almost like a candy popped on the ends of her fingers against her skin.

He answers that it’s been shite, as honestly it has, and she reaches across the table to hold his hand for a moment before returning to her salad. What would she say?

“He’s not all bad, is he?” She’s comforting in reference to the man who hired him months ago and who she still hasn’t met and hopefully never will.

“He is.”

“At least it’s halfway over and you’ll get to go home soon enough.”

“Would be better if you were there,” he answers back to her, staring into her eyes, too sunny for such a dreary day.

“Sorry?” The noise comes from the waitress, who has been waiting for him to answer some banal question for who knows how long. As he looks up where she’s standing, he notices a sneer that hogs her entire nose and corrupts her mouth into a frown. Appropriate since he’s making a fool of himself aloud, evidently.

“Was-was talking to myself.”

With a hesitant hand, she slides his check onto the table. “Whenever you’re ready.” She says before walking away without another look at him.

When she walks away, Fitz hangs his heavy head, burying his forehead in his hand so as not to show anyone else how much of a bloody doofus he is.

* * *

Early Autumn hits her like a ton of bricks and that is at least partially due to exhaustion. The other part is pain that creeps into most of her joints and several of her muscles. In the morning, things are worse, and though she needs it, it’s embarrassing to ask Daisy to rub her ankles and calves. She wakes and rummages around in the blanket debating whether or not to rise before bearing the step out of bed and onto the rug, and it is the pressure of her body weight that gets her. She must be the size of a baby beluga by now. She feels it. At nineteen weeks, the bump is there; there is no hiding The Bump.

Uncle Phil has affectionately named it that, the mirror of his first daughter who thinks of her own weekly names. This week, it is mango-baby.

She sits on the edge of the bed first, feet waiting for that first vital step. Today is the day that they’re hoping to find out the baby’s assigned gender, and Jemma knows she’s just along for the ride. It doesn’t much matter to her what shape the baby’s genitals are, but she’s happy to sit there and let the doctors prod her with the ultrasound wand; it’s just one occasion of many. With nervous feet, she stands and makes her way into the washroom to perform her routine.

After what she’s sure is a lifetime of meds and vitamins, she heads back out into the bedroom and takes a seat back on the bed. At this point, it is the only comfortable place she knows. She sinks back into the pillows and reaches for her phone to scroll through the syllabus.

_[Do you want some help with groceries shopping?]_ A text reads. Without having to look at the caller ID, she knows who the sender is, partially from his language patterns and partly because he continues to offer to help her with household chores in what is a very sweet and misguided attempt to come visit again. She can’t help but feed the smile, though, knowing that he’s trying his best. In another world, he would be more than welcome to come visit, bring ice cream, and hang out with the three of them: Daisy, Jemma, and Bump.

She can’t blame him for trying either, since the only thing she’s told him is that she’s much too busy with the semester midterms to be thinking about social time. The biggest lie is that, since everything seems to be a collection lost to social time. _[I’m fine, but thank you.]_ She can’t bring herself to cut him off completely, but she can’t tell him the truth either. No man in his right mind would want to initiate a romance with someone in a state such as hers. With a laugh, she considers how difficult it is to engage in a romantic relationship even with herself.

A soft rap touches the door, and Jemma knows it’s Daisy. “Are you up?” She whispers. It used to be a given that if the sun was up then so was she, but with all the fatigue, she understands how it has become a question.

“Yes,” Jemma answers as she braves the path to the bedroom door and opens it.

“I just wanted to let you know that I’m coming with you all to your appointment today. That’s alright, right?” Her eyes look tired, her voice a little more hoarse than the usual low tone.

“Absolutely. Are you okay?”

With a nod, she shrugs. “Boys are gross. That’s all.” She points at The Bump and wrinkles her nose. “You heard that, right? Make sure you’ve got your junk in order.”

“Is this about the new boytoy?” Jemma tries to engage. She knows that everything that can be tastefully turned into a joke should be for Daisy, especially when she’s feeling down.

Between her hands, she wrings the sleeves of her shirt. “Yeah, I just don’t think it’s going to work out. He’s got a lot of family drama and I just don’t feel like getting involved with all that.” She comes in and sits in the rocking chair where Jemma does homework and brings her legs up in criss-cross.

“To be fair, you have some family drama, too.” Jemma says while she stretches her legs out one by one, a hand on the door frame to keep her from toppling over. (It wouldn’t be the first time if she fell. It was pretty embarrassing.)

“Not the same kind, though. Ours is good drama compared to the stuff he’s going through, and I know rationally that it’s not Grant’s fault, but I’d still have to be a part of all of it.”

The phone buzzes again, and the two women reach for it in race that Jemma loses.

[I just haven’t seen you in a long time. Can I bribe you with a fresh cat photo?] Daisy reads the request aloud. She flips the screen so that the beluga can see the photo that’s been sent to her: Smudge standing on the front porch with a bright red leaf balancing on his head.

She cannot suppress the “aww!”.

“I don’t understand why you don’t just tell him the truth, Jemma. He seems like an actual legitimate nice guy.” She chides, looking back through the scant messages that have been send in the previous days.

“Because,” Jemma takes a seat and rubs her belly, hand full of cocoa butter that has done only a little to keep the stretch marks at bay, “this is the sort of family drama that makes people run.”

With a sigh, she sits the phone down. “All I’m saying is that if you like him the way I think you do, and he runs away at the truth, then he’s not worth it.”

“Probably.”

“No probably. Not worth it.” She punctuates with a stiff pointed index finger.

* * *

The Coulson home is a pale green bungalow that is situated on the outskirts of downtown. From the porch, the tall buildings in the city can be seen at a distance above the fading trees that line the entire neighborhood. It smells, perpetually like tomato bushes in the yard and up the walkway, a sign of new growth since Phil is not exactly a green-thumbed gardener and the soil is not very fertile there. How he got the plants was a mystery considering the lateness of the season. Despite this, It’s a perfect place, in Jemma’s opinion, to raise a baby. She waddles a bit, mindful of the inward lean of her legs now that she is growing more, behind Melinda as they make their way inside and up the stairs. Opening into the foyer, Jemma knows already that something is different, but she cannot put her finger on it, so she stands there for a moment and examines the room.

“Do you like it?” Phil asks with his arms out, an auctioneer modelling a new piece about to go up for bidding.

She examines harder. There is obviously something big that has changed if he’s seeking her opinion. The expression on her face is of neutral approval, she hopes, with a little smile and she pushes a strand of hair behind her ear nervously.

“We painted,” Melinda says, a hand on her shoulder as though she knows that there is too much to take in and not enough direction.

“Ah!” Recognizing that there is a drastic difference in the sitting room, she heads there and flicks the floor lamp on to illuminate better. Yellow light pools in the corners, pressing the light petal pink of the walls to the forefront of the space. They’ve painted some of their shelves with ivory white and together, the theme is so romantic that Shakespeare comes to mind. “I don’t know how I didn’t smell the fumes.”

“Your sense of smell is probably great, but my husband is also exceptionally clever at hiding things,” Aunt Melinda winks and reaches for his hand to pull him into the kitchen. They’ve promised her barbacoa, and Jemma refuses to leave without some.

Daisy slings her bag onto the comfortable cotton couch and turns on the television, beckoning for Jemma to join her and the two sit together only briefly before sobs seize Jemma whole.

“Oh my god, what’s wrong?”

“Did they paint it pink because they thought they were going to have a little girl?” She forces out through sniffles. After the ultrasound, it was confirmed that the baby did not have any traditional societal inclinations toward pink. What if they were disappointed? Sure, she had no control over what shape the baby’s unmentionables took, but she wanted them to be happy. That was the point after all.

Though her friend is bawling, a smile cracks Daisy’s face in two. “They chose pink because it’s Mom’s favorite color.” She leans over and pulls Jemma into a hug the same way they did when they were kids at sleepovers bonding over poor renditions of their favorite songs at karaoke.

“Okay, well, I know that this is ridiculous, but I simply cannot help myself.” She wipes her tears with her thumb. “I just don’t want anyone to be dissatisfied.”

They hold hands, and Daisy’s are warm and strong. “No one is upset about this. I’m going to have a little brother. Mom and Dad are having a baby--their own baby! And you’re doing all of this for us. You could literally smack either of them in the face with a slimy pond fish and we wouldn’t care.”

Oh bloody hell. That was not fair. She gathered herself and tried to focus--one point--she stared outside the house through the wide glass door, at the bright blue bird feeder they hung by the deck. Swinging back and forth gently in the wind, the thing was a relaxing view. Wonderful, considering what she was going to say next. “I’ve decided something. I don’t want you to be upset.”

Daisy sat at attention, her eyes pooling with worry, she squeezed Jemma’s hand.

“I’m going to withdraw from my class this semester instead of finishing.”

“What?” Blinking back the shock or curiosity, Daisy leaned back against the puffy cushion of the sofa.

“It’s been so hard to focus. I just need to-to prioritize the fetus.” She rushed. It was a thorough plan she developed. The thought had even sprouted that she should be keeping a better planner, week to week, and spending more time on exercise as little as she wanted to admit it. Honestly, even the thought made her head swim--but that could be hormones too.

A giant sigh erupted from her best friend. “I was so worried you were going to say something else.”

Jemma tried to hide her shock. Surely this was a big deal, too? Her phone vibrated in her pocket, an alarm that was probably initiated by Fitz, and she wondered what he would say if she was telling him this instead.

“I don’t mean--I’m sorry. I know that this is a big sacrifice for you--even bigger than the whole,” she gestured to the football that Jemma was carrying on her front under her top. “This whole thing.”

“Can we just watch the television?” She asked, flashing back to the night that she and Fitz had gotten strange and decided to watch nature documentaries while eating roasted chicken on the couch. In the sitting room, though things were even keel and clean and aesthetically beautiful, she felt like the might be spinning. It reminded her of another feeling entirely.

Remembering her first failing grade, what stuck out most of all was the gruesome red mark that her professor had spat onto the top of the page just under her typed name. The comments were vile. “Under-researched” was the least favorite, as she had researched very much but had simply forgotten to cite her source. The phrase, “meh” had nothing on the frowning face that the TA had written. If the professor had graded it herself, she would have known that Jemma had not only fact-checked several of the important points of her thesis, but also the articles cited within the articles she had cited in her bibliography.

The sitting room was quaint and organized and lovely, but when she thought of the failing grade, it looked angry. The lamps looked judgemental. She bit her lip to steel whatever quivering was trying to rise to the surface. “I just don’t think I can do all of these things at once. It’s sensible to take a break, don’t you agree?”

“Listen, Jemma,” Daisy says while she adjusts her position, crossing a leg under her. “I love you. You are more than a friend to me. You’re part of the family. But I don’t care if you need to take a break from your school junk. Do whatever you think is best.”

Jemma nods. “Maybe I was being more dramatic than what the situation calls for.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that you keep letting other people make decisions for you. Mom and Dad are choosing what genetic tests you’re going to undergo and you continue to let that little baby, not even a whole human yet, decide for you whether or not you are going after the guy you have feelings for.”

“Why do we continue to come back to this?” If she was able to summon a growl, she would. Instead, the noise fizzles out in her throat.

With a flourish, Daisy pushes her over and removed the mobile phone from the pocket of her jeans. “Because of this,” she says. She unlocks the phone and swipes through something with her brow furrowed, searching for a particular something that Jemma knows she likely won’t recognize. When the item has been found, she turns the screen to her before reading aloud, “I know you are stressed out. Need any help with studying?”

She flicks through the messages again, “Found out that they’re playing your favorite animal doc at The Grailhouse. I’ll buy tickets?”

Jemma leaned back into the pillow that was normally too puffy, but had become a lifesaver for her lumbar. “Okay? So?”

“Not only is he patient, smart, and sweet, he is totally jonesing for Jemma time. Actual time.” She lowers her voice before looking back into the kitchen to see if her parents are approaching. “Have you slept with him since you met?”

“No!” She almost snorts.

He likes her. She snatches the phone back from her friend’s hand. Of course she knew it! Of course it was obvious that he liked her as he’d just about spilled the exact words the last time he saw her and, you know, kissed her.

“Are you going to keep him hanging by a thread until this little guy is born? Then what?”

Admitting it and believing it are two different things. Hypothetical images played like films in her head: removing her top and having to explain why her breasts were leaking, being made to wait six weeks after their first official date to have sex even though she wasn’t really the waiting type, explaining that she was only really hormonal and that was why she was confessing her love a week after becoming his girlfriend. Ridiculous. Even the small mustard seed of a thought was humiliating.

From the kitchen, Melinda calls them to the table where the smell of beef searing had grown strong. Their dining room had been matched perfectly with the faint pink paint that was covering the walls. Just the small change makes everything in the house seem renewed even though it has always been a treat to look at. In the corner of the room, by the sliding glass door that leads out onto the deck, Jemma sees that Aunt Melinda and Uncle Phil have already chosen a baby seat, though the baby sitting up on his own was still almost a year away.

“That’s very cute,” she points as she approaches, getting a better look at the modern thing, decorated in a warm brown that Jemma thinks she has never seen in the wild before.

“Thanks. We got it out of some Swedish catalogue that Melinda gets delivered here once month.” Phil explained as he took his seat beside the baby chair.

That settled it. It was a sign from the universe. Jemma Simmons needed to shift her focus entirely.


	7. Chapter 7

The grocery store is not too badly crowded, and that is why she waited until lunch time to head out. If not having their own brown bagged lunch, people are off in restaurants and drive-thrus ignorant of the hot bar that tastes like heaven and can be smelled from the neighborhood where she lives. It’s the treat Jemma plans to indulge in after she’s picked up the produce and before she approaches the freezer section she’s also been thinking of. More specifically, the pineapple ice lollies that she found a month ago and has eaten a hundred of.

She begins not alphabetically, as her roommate jokes, but by color. Orange and green are the healthiest, but red is good for the heart and she begins by scouring the produce section that way.

Red: bell peppers, kimchi, and tomato.

Orange: other bell pepper, navel orange, and carrot.

Yellow: summer squash and lemon and banana.

She is looking at the list when her name is suddenly called, gently, by a man--Leo. It’s Leo who’s calling her name. She reflexively turns to hide her swell behind her handbasket. “Hello!”  _ Is that too enthusiastic? _ No sense worrying, she corrects herself, since the words have already flown from her lips and she cannot suck them back in now.

“How weird to see you in the wild. How are you? How did your presentation go?” He asks, showing his wide and square teeth. A ginger beard has turned up, ticking the sides of his face. He must see her, because a hand reaches up to scratch it.

“Oh, it uh, it went…” Her heart hammers and she wonders if she’s turned the color of a ghoul, since she feels like all of her blood has rushed out of her face--probably into her swollen ankles, honestly.  _ Tell him, Jemma. _ She says to herself, but she can’t bring the words to the surface.

Time moves incredibly slowly as he nears her from the other side of the banana stand where he was a moment ago, providing perfect cover. Time moves slower still as his smile drops and his eyebrows raise. Surely, this was instantaneous the moment he caught sight of the Coulson baby, now the size of the coconut she planned to add into her basket once she reached the color brown on her list. Or it was white. All of a sudden, she can’t remember where she sorted it.

“I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you--”

“What the hell--” 

“It’s complicated--It’s not my baby--”

Incredulousness would be natural. Knowing this does not make the anger on his face softer. “Not  _ your  _ baby?!”

“I--it’s a long story.” Her head hangs defeatedly and her basket is already too heavy, so she puts it on the floor to rest before Fitz walks over and picks it up and puts it inside his trolley. 

“I don’t understand what’s going on.” The confident posture that he normally employs carries different connotations than usual. For instance, his hands on his hips look less like sturdiness and more like supervision. His wide stance looks less like confidence and shows him now like someone trying not to fall over.

“Aren’t you angry at me?” She asks. The baby flutters, kicking her in a low place. He must agree. He’s likely developed May’s logic early, though he can only hear Jemma’s hormones and doesn’t grasp the English language quite yet. Reaching for her handcart again, she sees Fitz’s eyes swallowing her up. 

He reaches for words and pulls none, eyes still glued to her. “Not? I--” his breath exits in a rough exhale as he moves his attention to an old man in a robe leaning between the two of them to grab a green bundle of bananas. “What is going on?” 

“I didn’t tell you because I was sure that this would be uncomfortable for you.”

“I just saw you a couple of months ago.” Eyes move back to the still-fluttering bump, which has grown since then. "It's obviously uncomfortable."

Pulling his cart out of the way, she tries to construct the explanation before realizing that she doesn’t owe him one. It’s really the hurt reflecting in his mouth that he’s trying to hide that makes her compels her to think about it, let it out as quickly as she can. “I’m a surrogate. For Daisy’s parents. This is their baby, and I’m carrying it because her mother can’t.” 

Leo chokes on his words just a bit before they plop out. “You’ve been pregnant this whole time?”

“The baby is seven months along.” She clarified. “So I’ve been carrying him since before we met. And I didn’t tell you because I knew that this,” her tender hand fell on the top of the bump as she spoke, the place where his little fist was. “I knew that this would be shocking and that I barely understood it, but that you didn’t have to carry that strangeness too. You were just a stranger that I met on the street and got directions from.”

He frowns. 

“Now you’re my friend and I knew it was only fair to tell you… It’s just... how was I supposed to start a conversation like this?”

Around them, people picked their groceries from all sides while they held conversations with their mates and friends, unbothered by the serious discussion they were having, lives completely unchanged by what felt like a big admission curling around both Jemma and Fitz like smoke surrounding a forest. Though they cannot see through flames, the tangible space between them segregates them from each other, a tightly woven tapestry of the white lies she knows she’s told. But they weren’t white, were they? They have done damage to him. 

“You couldn’t just tell me that it was complicated or that you… Why couldn’t you just tell me? We’ve been talking for--for six months now and I thought you shut me out. I thought I did something,” He said. 

“No, I did something. And I wanted to keep it a secret.” She took inventory of the produce section again and felt a chill as a roll of thunder wracked the cooler filled with greens, the place where she was meant to be picking up arugula and zucchini and collards. It was hard to stay cool enough and harder still to stay warm once she got too cold. Whether it was the stress or the cooler that was shaking her underneath her jumper, she didn’t know. 

“Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered you so much,” he thinks aloud, looking with concentration into a bin of grapes that he isn’t picking from. “I’m sorry that I’ve made it more difficult for you. Will you forgive me?” He holds out his arms and the space between them is so inviting that she moves in before she can consciously make the decision to. He feels a particular way against her cheek. She doesn’t mean for it to happen, but her belly is pushed flush up against him. It feels distinct. 

“It’s not your fault,” Jemma confides as she pulls away. “I’m sorry that I strung you along this far. You were right about that though, about me fancying you and I selfishly didn’t want you to drop off the face of the earth Who wouldn't, though?” She feels her face redden and wonders if she’ll get emotional enough to start blubbering. 

He puts his hands into his pockets and leans closer to his trolley, rolling his head around his neck to loosen tension, she thinks. Likely, he has more than enough for the two of them. “Can we talk more about this?” 

She wants to jump up and down, to tell him of course, since he hasn’t run away screaming, maybe she can come out only a little scathed. The smell of garlic green beans envelops her as strongly as that request however, and her stomach lets out a substantial groan. “Yes--But I know this sounds strange--could we do it over there?” She points to the hot bar that is just outside of his eyeline otherwise, and once he wraps his palms around the handle of his trolley, she breathes a deep sigh of relief and follows him into the enclosed space.

* * *

  
  
  


Jemma has been able, up to this point, to keep her food mostly sensible, but the further along the baby gets, the more she craves carbohydrates. Bread and white potatoes are the most sinister culprits, and across the able on that man’s plate, they look especially appetizing. With jealousy, she eyes them and imagines that is what she is biting into, when in reality, her mouth is chomping down on a big bite of salted broccoli. She needs the salt, she knows, but her ankles and feet do not. 

Fitz must notice this, because before he takes a bite, he stabs a soft piece of his potato and drops it onto the corner of her plate. 

“Why’ve you done that?” She asks as she sits back up, straightening her back. 

“Done what?” 

“You’re giving me your food? What is--why do you do these things? Why are you so willing to sacrifice for someone who lied to you for six months?” 

Like a goldfish, he struggles for his breath and once he finds it, he sits up too, no longer hunched over the iceberg chunk that makes for an actually-depressing wedge salad. “I think I get it, if it’s just that you didn’t want me to go mad.”

“I couldn’t drop you entirely either because I guess I was hoping that once he’s born--when we make the hand-off a couple of months from now--that I could go back to who I was before. Someone who could approach your without all the complications that are already a part of this.” There was the schooling part as well--to think she had made it halfway through her last class before realizing that. That was what was needed to come next, but she had already committed time to Asheville and besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave yet. Plenty of things were still left waiting on the sidelines be experienced, like the rugged mountain hiking that she hadn’t practiced or the crazy festivities she was told would leave her breathless with excitement. So much time had been spent on trying to pick up her grades and then on the numerous appointments she was beholden to attend.

“There is never going to be a moment that complications are free from your life or mine. I have a few of my own.”

She settled in and made a show of sitting close to the edge of her chair and waiting with big swollen eyes. Maybe he would tell her off in the way she wanted or otherwise felt like she deserved. Only occasionally distracted by the smell of her lunch waiting in front of her, most specifically those garlic green beans covered in shaved almond pieces smelling like heaven wafting up to her sensitive nose. 

Like a stork, he picks himself up. “I’m dealing with family issues. I don’t always like to go into it and probably I shouldn’t.”

Jemma eyes the plate, but tries to hold onto what little decorum she has been able to sustain. 

“Please eat; I can tell you want to.” He encourages.

“Do you want to talk about it? We have plenty of unlikely family occurrences as well, so maybe there is something in common.” She speaks from behind her hand to cover the crunching she is doing. After all, she shouldn’t just allow him to ignore completely what he was going to say, even though the moment doesn’t seem as serious as he might have intended. When a concerned look crosses his face, she realizes. “Is it--are you okay?” She asks with her eyes beginning to water and her fork placed back down on her cafeteria tray. Zero to sixty in a second.

“Just out with it? What I’m supposed to say?” Fitz asks with his voice tinged with disbelief. 

She wants to tell him that he doesn’t have to. There are plenty of things this could mean and several of them are unthinkable. 

“I had an awful dad. I don't want to get too much into it. He left when I were young and it was just me and Mum for years until he came back. Thankfully I was old enough that getting away was just a move to the next town over.” He said, taking his water bottle from the tray and wringing the plastic in his hands as though it would twist in the same manner of a dish towel.

“He came back?”

“Lives with mum now.” He admits while staring at some space behind her.

She turns to see what has caught his attention: the blank pine-colored sheetrock of the wall. Not even a painting to look at. With a hesitant hand, she reaches over the table but stops when she sees his attention shift. Instead, the puts her hand down and tries to find words instead of touch. “I’m sorry. That must feel very foreign.”

Fitz nods and relinquishes the water bottle. With a shrug, he debates himself before continuing. “When I think about my family story, I think I might get it--why you wouldn’t want to tell me about your baby.”

“The Coulsons’ baby,” she corrects without thinking. It’s become habit during the medical appointments to let the practitioners know that she is not an expectant mother, but with others, it is easier to skip over the complications than it is to explain.

“Does he have a name yet?” he asks, seemingly without fear, though Jemma can only imagine him being at least a little bit off-kilter. Even Captain America would be.

She shakes her head to answer since her mouth is already full to the brim of corn salsa. There are no chips on her plate, but the salsa is to die for.

“Last name Coulson,” he muses while he studies the blank wall again. “Gregory. Patrick. Michael.” He lists.

“A real penchant for categorizing things, eh?” She asks. It’s a surprising thing to think that he would want to think of names for Bump since he did not belong to her. Maybe Fitz fancies her still, she doesn’t know, but he is a different man than most she has met. No frame of reference specific enough.

“I wanted to be a scientist.” He says, looking at her again and the mere thought of that lights up his eyes. He seems like the type.

It raises questions. Dozens of them that they probably won’t have time to address at a single lunch in the middle of a grocery store. “How did you end up in an architect’s office then?”

He smirks. “A father’s influence, we’ll say. Took the first thing that was offered once I had to move.”

* * *

  
  
  


As Fitz takes his usual chair in the usual corner of May’s office, he prepares himself for the awkward admission of exactly what has happened in his life in the past week. Equally unlikely and exceptional, his story is something he doubts she will have ever heard before, and if he tells her everything, she will never hear the story again. He wonders if he should write it down, tuck it away somewhere instead of sharing the trust of what has happened to him while he is awake and walking around as a functioning human being decidedly not dreaming, though having lived the past week in the manner that it has passed would make a lot more sense if he woke up just before the appointment began.

“How have you been?” She asks in the formal introduction they usually perform while they settle in.

“Alright,” he answers in kind.

May settles in and moves around until she reaches a comfortable position. “Glad to hear that. Tell me about your last week. Work go any better?” She asks next, referring to the conversation that was had previously about healthy and appropriate ways to handle aggression at work. 

He nods, and makes his usual round as well, checking in on her plants and the photos in the frame which have been replaced with different ones. A large group of people all incredibly different in features, so maybe a workshop meeting together on a mountain. That would make sense; several months ago, she did have to postpone an appointment due to a continuing education seminar, not that she came back with different tactics, since hers were probably tried and true, anyway.

Her eyes go soft the way they do sometimes. “Tell me about it.” 

“Mr. Ryan was out a few days, things with family being in town. Wasn’t as hectic in the office. Got to be by myself a lot of the time, and that makes a difference.”

“Were you able to use any of the techniques we talked about during our last session?”

He nods again. “He got angry with me for sending out something for review with a client even though it's the customary practice.”

She waits for him to continue with a cocked eyebrow. Sometimes, he wonders if May is as affected as he is by the nonsensical frustration he has to deal with on a daily basis. If it is blue, Mr. Ryan is angry that it was not yellow. Were it yellow, he would be angry that it was not green. It doesn’t matter who the client is, but seems to depend more on the moon cycle and whether there were shells in the eggs he cooks himself in the mornings.

“So like you suggested I should, I put myself in his shoes and I figured that maybe his anger was because he hadn’t finished the design and had marked the file incorrectly on his computer as being done.”

“Did that help you at all?” When he hesitates to answer, she continues to talk to keep the flow natural. “Did that maybe change the dynamic of the room when you considered that?” 

“No,” he admits. Instead, when he apologized and started the necessary spiel about how he could prevent similar ‘errors’ from happening in the future, Mr. Ryan had begun in on how Fitz needed to communicate better and also speak louder because it was much more reasonable in his 66 year old opinion that he was not having hearing problems, but that Fitz was muttering. “It got hairy, like it tends to. He started going on about my accent. Didn’t say it like that, but I know what he meant.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. It’s a judgement that I’m making, though I shouldn’t, but he doesn’t sound like a very reasonable sort of person.”

Fitz cracks a smile. Vindication at last. “I’m in agreement.” 

May smiles too, something big enough that her face might crack because that is so rare an occurrence. Behind her, the sky has already become still with impending sunset. It transfers in hue from the golden orange that it had been when he arrived that evening to a dusky sort of gray, skipping the familiar blue of the mountain air entirely. As he watches, he wonders if this is an omen. If he admits to May when she asks about the other things that happened during the week, about the strange occurrences running around rampant, will she tell him he’s crazy?  _ Is _ he crazy? This has yet to be confirmed.

He scratches the back of his neck with a nervous hand. “The day that he’ll decide to retire back to his thirty-nine year old wife to some mansion in the antebellum south grows nearer every day.”

And she laughs. “Sometimes, that’s exactly how you’ve got to think about it. You can only control what’s happening in your head, not the way that anyone else acts or what they say.” 

Maybe there are bees inside his head. It’s the only way that he can explain why there feels like there is so much pressure between his temples. There is a a swimming noise inside that makes him feel a bit green. “I have to tell you something,” he says.

“Go ahead. I’m listening.” Her smile transforms into a polite curiosity and she folds her hands in her lap demurely. 

With his eyes on the window, trying to find the leftovers of color before the yellow lamps drown out all the natural shades, he swallows hard without meaning to. “I didn’t go to dinner again, with my Mum and Dad and I didn’t tell them that I’d decided not to come.” 

“Oh,” she slips, and though she doesn’t mean to show it, he’s sure that the corners of her words are edged with disappointment. Her brows are steeled in a hard line, groomed to know when she shouldn’t show what she thinks, but maybe this small poison has cracked her somehow.

By that admission, he’s trephinated some of the pressure in his head, but it is still rich. A cream masquerading as soup. “I ran into that girl at the grocery store and we had lunch and then dinner together instead. We spent the afternoon together at her flat.” 

Instead of chastising him, because she never does, not really, she waits for him to elaborate with her palms still open.

“I understand why she’s been distant. Like we talked about several sessions ago, I had given her space and let the attachment go. Maybe this is the cosmos telling me that this was bound to come full circle.”

“How does she feel about this?” May asks in the effort to defend the girl, he knows. She should. Not only is that the most responsible thing she can do, but Fitz knows that he sounds like he’s crazy. Were someone telling him the same story, he would see the same problems loud and clear. A man thinking of a girl almost constantly, dreaming about her, and then running into her in a grocery store by coincidence? He’d think not. Red flags shoot up all around.

“She’s invited me back into her life. I think more seriously than before. I’m of the opinion that she was worried what I would think of her and what she feels her flaws are. But I’ve seen them and I don’t think they’re flaws at all.” He reaches for the pillow he claimed long ago and squeezes the corner of it, tests it. He doesn’t think he needs to pick it up--just worry the fabric between his fingers.

“I’m concerned, Fitz. Not that you’re going to harm her or that this has become an obsession. I think you’ve shown me that you’re not going to stalk her, which is something I bet concerns you. That doesn’t eliminate the possibility that this might be danger.”

“What are you worried about?”

May looks up, above him, like she is choosing what to say from a catalogue of words and she might very well be. “Is her behavior dangerous? The fluctuating between closeness and distance?”

A shrug runs through him. Should he feel as embarrassed as he does by that question?

“I think this may be where you trust your gut.” She leans forward with her elbows on her knees to be eye level with him.

Bloody hell. His gut thinks something particular about Jemma, very close to the same thing his belly feels. How nervous he was to see her again. But he knows what May is saying, really, that this is about something more than whether or not he fancies her, but if there is a chance she will hurt him. Trying to decide how to answer, he struggles and stalls. There is no way to know, but the chance is real. “When we talked about my boss, we had to talk about the truth that I cannot control how he feels, only how I feel. Which seems elementary in relation to this, but is it very different?”

She seems to accept this and leans back into the cross-hatched cushion on her chair. “Do you think that applying this concept to your dad would work, too?”

No longer swimming, the pain in his head has turned into something more like a sinus headache. “I don’t know.” Instead of meeting her face, where he knows he should look when they talk, he stares at the window sill and out into the parking lot of her office where the tree he’s used to hiding behind during their sessions has vacated most of its leaves and sits naked for everyone to see. Vulnerable. 

“We don’t talk about how to bridge that gap. During our first session, we discussed your goals and one of them was to address this discomfort. You’ve been sitting with it for months now. We’ve addressed most of your other goals. Are you ready for this one?”

His nod changes to a shake before he realizes what’s happening. “When I try, I think I just get angry. Furious, and not just him. I get angry at Mum as well.” It’s not her fault and he is sure of it, but the rage still springs from his fountain mouth and he knows it would easily become something worth regretting.

“You’re welcome to feel that anger. To sit with it and to remember that just because you can feel it doesn’t mean that it’s bad and you don't have to act on it.”

“Because even though the feelings have a certain memories attached to them doesn’t mean that we feeling them is bad. I know,” he says, repeating something they have discussed several times before. “I just don’t know if it’s worth it to talk about.”

“What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

“I could turn rabid,” he jokes without a laugh and watches the branches on the trees buffet in the wind, alight from the bright street lights that have just illuminated everything outside of the room where he and his therapist sit. 

“I don’t think that is what’s going to happen.”

He bites the inside of his cheek. “What if one day, when I become a father… “ He stops. The sound is frankly absurd to begin with. “What it I become like him and I can’t keep myself away from that cycle and instead, I perpetuate it onto my own son?” 

May’s head leans to the side in thought. “What makes you think that you’ll become like your father?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” He scoffs.

“Because you have the presence of mind to choose. And because you have made plenty of benign, healthy choices in situations where you could have chosen violence instead.” The voice changes from rational to a tone that is almost passionate as she speaks. 

Sure, there is a truth that rings there, but to hear it and to be the one ringing the bell, there is distance between.


	8. Chapter 8

He arrives perfectly on time in the manner Jemma’s gotten used to. “Good afternoon!” She says in the chipper way that he has grown to expect. In the weeks that have passed, he dreams of her still, but instead of wearing the cotton candy colored makeup, she is wearing scarves and sweaters. He reckons this is because she is as hot as a furnace at night and when she sleeps next to him, he has to edge his way out from under the blanket. 

Once he sees her struggling to put on her coat to leave the apartment, he rushes to her side and helps her into it, pulling it out so she can slink her arms in. “Already ready to go?” He asks as he pulls her bag from her shoulder and makes for the door beside her.

“I figured if we got there a little early we could help them finish the cooking.” She offers because she is a godsend, or maybe it is because she enjoys chores more than she enjoys life.

He’s brought the car this time, so she can sit. They’ve walked around the block a hundred times, but even the idea of walking all the way to The Coulsons’ home seems daunting. “Alright. Daisy coming with us?”

“She was on a lunch date with someone, but she’ll meet us there.” Jemma clicks the door locked behind them and reaches for his hand. She does that. She does it the most when he’s driving her somewhere, as rare as that is. It’s like she latches on and doesn’t want to let go and he likes it, but makes his stomach nervous.

“How was your day?” Fitz asks when they get to his parked car and as he is putting the green bottle of wine that he has brought from the grocery store from the front seat into the back. She falls into her seat with a thud and he wonders if he shouldn’t have helped her in, but she seems happy enough as a pile of winter clothes in the passenger's seat, pushed the entire way back to accommodate Bump, as she calls him.

“Long. But I’m excited for you to meet them. They’re happy to meet you as well.” 

He thought about flowers initially, and even went so far as to ask for help. The smart choice that the cashier helped him pick out was lilies and that would probably be fine. With a certain knowledge, he is sure that that Jemma would have preferred roses, the orange ones that are always hiding in the back of the fridge. Strangers, on the other hand, make for another puzzle that he is not sure he is equipped to handle. Too heavy for either he or Jemma. “I am too.” He answers with honestly. From what she tells him, they are nice people and they take care of her. Despite this, it feels particularly like a test that he must pass and that they must too and it’s a good thing that he’s taken the time to study. Called his mum and all. 

That was another puzzle. Though she was surprised at the conditions under which Leo Fitz had finally found a girlfriend, she still fawned over her and her gigantic fetus, not that they had ever met, but she loved to ask about Jemma. Loved to know how the baby was doing and if she was ready to give birth, as though she was the one doing the planning. His heart felt a particular kind of sick about it. Would she still like him after the baby was born? He didn’t worry if he would like her since that seemed easy enough to know. As he pulled off of the curb in front of her apartment, he meditated on that question. 

“Is something bothering you? You don’t need to be nervous.” She cooed from her seat. 

“No, it’s not that.” He says. “Just a rough day at work.” And it was. It was too often. The job search that he’d put in for recently had yielded nothing but an interview at a manufacturing plant as a repairman, and while that would have been engaging enough, it paid very little. 

Jemma smiles, her straight and bright white teeth visible in his mirror. “Your day at work is over now. All you have to think about is me. And my family, but I promise they’ll be good to you.” Somehow, she smiles for the entire rest of the drive and is clearly tickled by her own joke, the expression fluctuating as they turned corners or as she pointed where to go next.

In the small pieces that she had shared with him before, he has gotten a foggy picture in his head: a white house with a big ginkgo tree in the front yard, though she’s never mentioned any particular types of trees. The vision is in vignette, of a garden that teems with violets and coleus in the spring and is replaced with burgundy and goldfinch-colored mums in the Autumn. He bets that the house must sound noisily at night, creaking as the old thing settles.

When they arrive, he realizes how wrong he is. Surely this is not it. This house is something out of a catalogue, and then it hits him as he walks around to help Jemma get out of the car. “Mr. Ryan designed this house.”

“What?”

“My boss designed this house back when you and I were just kids.” He is aware of his gaping mouth, but for some reason, he can’t find the purchase to close it. The image is clearer than the day: The portfolio that sat in the lobby of the office, on the coffee table. He’d wiped down the books before, ran a dust-cloth between the jacket-covered pages. Here, before him in 3D, it was a sight to behold. 

“What a strange coincidence,” Jemma muttered as she brushed herself off and slung her bag over her shoulder. 

A sigh of relief brushed through him like a fox running through a forest. “At least I have something to help me break the ice, then.”

She giggles, and it is light enough to bring him to the surface of himself. He’s warm. He’s a koi fish sunning on the surface of a pond as he follows her to the front door with his discount wine in hand. (What has hasn’t told Jemma is that his yearly review was earlier in the day and he barely got a raise. Even worse was that his boss told him the only reason he got one was because he didn’t want to go through the process of trying to find and train another ‘damn millennial’.)

He watches as she slips through the door without knocking and helps her with her coat, since she always needs it. He almost laughs despite himself, watching her struggle like a turtle with her shell on her front. 

“Hey, Jemma! This is him?” A man walks over, brandishing a wooden spoon that he is drying on an exceptionally manly apron. He plucks the spoon away in the apron’s pocket and holds his hand out for a shake in a smooth motion like a man who would probably be good with a gun. Strange, for a teacher. 

Fitz shakes.

“This is Leo,” she introduces while she hangs her puffy coat on the rack. 

“Nice to meet you,” Phil scripts back. “Bring that bottle into the kitchen and we’ll crack it open.”

The house looks bigger on the inside, decorated with long heavy mirrors gilded with soft brass, and hung on light pink walls. Mr. Ryan would never have allowed that, but the thought of rubbing it in his face is tempting. Changes have been made, he’s sure. He watches the edges of walls, organized distinctly to his boss’s specifications, and wonders what he would think of it now.

“Hey, Jemma and baby!” a woman calls from the other room, and Fitz almost makes a joke about if he is the baby or if she’s talking to someone else.

They turn the corner, and head to the kitchen and Fitz can hear the wine bottle hit the floor before he can feel his hand relax. “Oh,” he says. With bated breath, he stares as the wine clunks down and miraculously, begins a roll toward his therapist’s feet.

She stands before him in a tee-shirt and a pair of jeans. Her hair is up and she looks relaxed, but her face contorts into a grimace in what has become mutual recognition. “Nice to meet you,” she says. 

Oh. Oh no. 

“Yes! I’m Fitz--Leo. I’m Leo.” He rushes, feeling himself flush violently. 

She shakes his hand, for the first time in ages. “Melinda,” and of course she is. He remembers that being on her business card, but of course he threw it out. He called her May because she called him Fitz. It was an agreement they made, and now, thinking about the card that he had shoved into his wallet forever ago, it should have been obvious to him. Aunt Melinda. Melinda May. 

Phil puts a hand on the small of his wife’s back and the pictures of the two of them rushes back to him, the two of them at a cookout, he thinks. Standing at the base of a waterfall. 

Fitz scrambles for his hostess gift and hands it to her. She accepts without flinching in what has probably become scripted as well. Surely this has happened to her before. Well, not this. Probably something like it--maybe having run into another patient in the supermarket. With his eyes, he hopes he is conveying that they need to talk. Desperately. Because if she isn’t hearing the hard beat of this heart, then what is that god awful noise?

“Here, let me get some glasses for that and then you and I can set the table.” May turns to her family, and asks Jemma to check in on Daisy to see if she’s on her way. Phil is assigned the task of going outside to see if the grilling cobs of corn have charred enough. 

Once the two of them are alone, there is a different air to the room. It’s not like their sessions and Fitz can feel discomfort creeping in. This is not like them at all. The dynamic he is used to feels much more focused and clean than this, eating dinner together and pretending to be friends. “This has never happened to me and I think this is likely the most awkward thing that ever will.” He gasps for a breath before going on. “I don’t know how to handle this and I am a lot less concerned about whether you and your husband are going to like me and more concerned that I sound like a bloody lunatic and you’d probably prefer that Jemma were a lightyear away from me.”

“I gave you advice on how to handle this sort of situation. Do you think you can?”

“You gave me advice about how to handle meeting my girlfriend’s family and not about how to confess that her surrogate mother is my shrink.” He bites his tongue as he finishes and realizes that he is shaking his foot. Appropriate, as nervous as he is.

She nods. “Okay, so you want them to know the truth about our professional relationship.”

“I think we’re going to have to break up.” 

“What does that mean?” Jemma laughs as she waddles back into the kitchen, her phone swinging in a relaxed hand. “Daisy is on her way, she says.”

Melinda nods something about that being great, and continues on, but Fitz can’t hear her.

Instead, the interruption of his voice is clanging, like someone standing in an empty room and playing the cymbals, echoing off the pink walls of their home. “May is my therapist.”

“What?” Jemma’s face falls and she leans over the chair she was about to sit in. “Melinda is your--? Really?” The expression shifts from disbelief into curiosity. 

This is not what he expected. The house isn’t burning to the ground, for one. “I didn’t know. I would have told you,” he thinks that’s true or he’d like to believe so.

The admission is strange, Jemma acknowledges as she sits down. “How didn’t you piece this together? You--you tell her your entire life, I thought. Did you tell her anything about me?” She faces her aunt, and the pictures of professionalism, May doesn’t make a move or attempt a syllable. Instead, she glances at her patient and then looks back at her family member. What is worse: the idea that May knows everything or she didn’t know that it was her at all?

“We did. I did.” Fitz admits with his hands open. In the warm light of the room, he looks almost like a painting, and it crosses Jemma’s mind that as beautiful as he is, he is still a piece of work. Not in the bad way, but the coincidence is rather unlikely. 

All of a sudden it dawns on her that there is a chance that her aunt Melinda has heard about how he feels. That would come up in conversation. “I have told Daisy all about how much I love you. How much different is this?” She asks this, but it doesn’t seem to be taken seriously. Intellectually, she knows it is much different. Swimming, her head tries to grasp at what this means. Does her aunt know the ways in which the two of them have been intimate? The thought is humiliating.

“I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. Is this okay?” Melinda asks before realizing something else and offering, “Do you need to be alone for a while?” She stands with her weight equal on her feet like a balancing scale during a round of measuring.

Leo looks as though he has paled the same color as a sheet of copy paper. “I’ll air it all. I’ll lay it all on the table right now in front of the both of you if we can remove me from this awkward mess of a situation.”

The front door opens and in strolls Daisy, completely oblivious to what has transpired between the three of them, while Uncle Phil is outside in his cocoon of relaxation, unaware of the hailstorm raging inside his home. “Hey, guys,” she says in greeting before coming in and sitting down at the table in front of her usual place setting.

“May,” he begins, turning to her. “I really love your daughter or niece or whoever she is to you. And I had no idea that this whole time we were talking about her. She’s the best friend that I’ve made since childhood.”

Jemma feels herself turn colors, and as she faces Daisy to share that excitement, she sees something more like disbelief clouding her face. Fogginess was a better word.

“I promise I don’t stalk her--but I’ve made that obvious, right?”

May nods, but sits down at one head of the table and appears to settle in the burgundy plush of the chair. A groaning noise from a sliding glass door interrupted any response she might have had, and her husband dances in with a place full of grilled corn steaming under aluminum foil.

“Jemma, I know this is weird and even if you don’t mind, I have to stop seeing May as a therapist obviously, because this is a breach of ethics.”

“Agreed,” Melinda says.

“Your Aunt Melinda has been close second for me in terms of getting me pointed in the right direction since I moved to the city.” He squeezes shut his eyes and Jemma knew this was because a confession was coming. After all, he’d made the same face when expressing his actual disinterest in watching every available documentary on Netflix. Just because David Attenborough was narrating didn’t mean the show was compelling he’d said once the two of them were alone again, this time eating over a plate of spaghetti squash that Jemma had prepared. “I told her so much about us.”

“Does she know about…” She can’t bring herself to finish the question, but looking at Melinda brings no easy answer since she is not allowed to share any details.

“Yeah, she knows,” he says, a look of pain between his eyebrows. 

Daisy begins to laugh so raucously that all three of the involved parties jump. “Are you talking about last Monday night?”

Jemma nods, and when her Uncle looks at her over the lenses of his glasses after having snuck in unnoticed, she shakes her head and tells him, “I’m not going to explain what she means.” Honestly, she’ll take all the dignity she can get. In her own defense, however, it is very difficult to initiate sexual intimacy for the first time in a budding relationship and even harder still when you are very pregnant at the time.

“But what I’m trying to tell you is that I’m facing some big issues here. My snake of a father is trying to slither his way back into mine and my mother’s life and May is going to know a lot about that.” His voice gets louder, but wavers and shakes, and as he explains, Melinda sits unbothered obviously, since she has probably heard the story before. “So you do, too.” 

He tells the story, and as he does so, she learns more than she ever thought she might. The picture of bravery, he tells the entire room about being called awful names and being embarrassed in front of his primary school teachers at conferences. There is a mention of being harmed, physically, and he skates over it. Every story is shallow, as it should be when you feel you must confess, but he goes into several examples of how cruel people can be, counting each occasion on his fingers.

When Leo is finally finished, Jemma is hiding her trembling mouth behind her hand and trying with a great effort not to burst out into tears in front of everyone, as she has done that too frequently in the past eight months. 

The room is quiet as a grave and the grilled corn has long stopped steaming. For a moment, May sits up and appears to be about to say something to all of them, but Daisy beats her to the punch with a loud clearing of her throat. “I know you two don’t normally celebrate Thanksgiving, but I just want to say that this is normally not how it goes.” 

Leo doubles over with laughter and Jemma watches him, glad if only to see that he is still the same man that was making bad jokes on tops of a hotel at the bar.

  
  
  



	9. Chapter 9

At night, in the middle of December, Jemma wakes and bolts upright from the fear of what she is certain is happening. She has pissed herself. And the worst part of that is that her boyfriend is lying in bed beside her in a state of ignorant bliss. She’ll have to wake him up and tell him so she can change the sheets and she is humiliated until she realizes that her back is also hurting. 

“Leo,” she coos, trying not to startle him too badly, but he still jerks up with one hand in a loose fist and the other rubbing sleep out of his eye.

“What are you planning on fighting?” She asks. 

“What? Yes?” He says, blinking awake the rest of the way with his face illuminated from the moonlight pouring through her bedroom window. 

If she weren’t sure she was beginning labor, she might want to wrap him into a hug. “My water broke, I think.” Instead of hugging, she needs to move. She needs action.

A moment flows past before he comprehends what she’s saying, and in a surprising way, he gets up and puts on the trousers and pair of shoes he discarded before tucking in beside her. “Alright. Do you want to call the Coulsons or should I?” He steps into the hallway and shouts for Daisy, who tumbles into the bedroom in an entirely different state.

“Is it now?” She stammers, and hollers for her dad who she no longer lives with, and sure her body already hurts, but watching her panic makes Jemma laugh.

“Okay, well,” Fitz puts a tentative hand on her shoulder, “Why don’t you get on some clothes and I’ll get Jemma all packed up.”

“Call your parents, please.” Jemma urges while she finds the purchase to stand up, and bend over the side of the bed to stretch out her lower back.

Daisy takes off without another word, heads down the hallway back to her room and flicks on the corridor light, nodding the whole way. 

Fitz grabs her bag and his keys off of the dresser and to start the car, not neglecting to press a kiss to her cheek first. “Just think,” he says quietly, “In a few hours, I’ll have you all to myself.” 

He helps her into the car with care and doesn’t mention that she may want to sit on a towel. He doesn’t patronize. 

In the back seat, Daisy is chatting to her parents, and though there is a strong feeling of both fear and excitement crowding her head, the most dominant feeling Jemma has is that of safety. She can’t recall another time in which she has ever felt so loved before. Through Daisy’s phone, she can hear Aunt Melinda squealing with joy. Before she has time to hold them back, there are happy tears all over her face. There, in the dark, Fitz reaches for her hand over the console of the car and squeezes it. 

* * *

  
  
  


“It’s not--I don’t think that--” Fitz is trying desperately not to agree to watching a baby work himself out of his new girlfriend’s body. Maybe it would be different if that was his baby, but it is certainly not. 

“Right--it should be Phil and Melinda.” Jemma argues, and if anyone should have any agency on an issue like this, it’s her.

Daisy is petulant. The three of them enter the first available room for delivering mothers and she pushes forward the wheelchair hospital staff has forced Jemma into. “I know that they have a lot of rights in this and I know how excited they are. That’s beside the point I’m making.” 

The nurse who has escorted them rolls her eyes and points out the hospital gown that Jemma is encouraged to change into so she’s more comfortable. Without pause, she also allows Jemma to ride out a rather shocking contraction that has her standing up out of the wheelchair and bending again over the bed. She mumbles something about probably getting into the bed soon, and heads out

“Jemma,” Daisy puts a hand on her back and rubs gently. “Don’t you want your boyfriend to be with you during this?” She whispers so that only she can hear.

“No, it--it doesn’t matter.” She bites her lip, but knows she won’t be able to continue that during the hardest part. 

“It’s not like that’s my baby, Daisy,” Fitz mumbles just as lowly. 

Stuck between knowing whether she wants them all to shut up or if she wants them to talk loud enough to hear. 

He crosses the room and leans on the other side of the hospital bed with her, the two of them face to face. “Do you want me to stay?” He asked, pressing a kiss to her cheek.

Jemma thought she might spit. Another contraction had already hit her in a furious wave. “I don’t give a damn whether or not you stay.” She gripped the edge of her mattress with a white-knuckled hand. “You could decide to fly to the Philippines right now and I wouldn’t care.” 

“See?” Fitz points. “She doesn’t care.” 

Creaking, the door opens and the rest of the family came rushing in. 

Melinda is the first, already cooing and her eyes full of nervous tears that were so out of character for her. “Are you alright?” She asked, taking Jemma’s hand and being generally hovered over as Phil flitted along behind her. 

“Yeah, I’m alright.” She said, finding the nerve to stand. She pushed a hand through the starched hospital gown she was supposed to don. Alright. But also scared to death. Honestly, she hadn’t thought about the delivery part of all of this too much. Similarly to how she had handled the decision of testing, she’s remained rather ambivalent. Usually, Jemma would consider herself a master of preparation, but it seemed such an outside manner, that she should have so little input. 

“It’s happening now, huh?” Phil says stupidly. Fine, he wasn’t stupid. Jemma’s just more concerned with how much her back was hurting. 

“Yes, now.” 

Fitz had already wandered off. She looked around, and though there was a halo of wonderful people all around, without the distraction of a contraction bearing down on her, the room still seems a little empty. 

“Aunt Melinda. Just you and me, okay?” She says, trying to stand a little straighter. Maybe she needed a nice light walk through the halls to speed things on a little more. 

Melinda takes Daisy’s place and presses a gentle hand between her shoulder blades. “Anything you want, Jemma.” 

* * *

  
  


It had been three hours. At least. Fitz takes another look at his watch and mourns the night’s sleep that he would have been enjoying if he weren’t surrounded by sick people waiting in the lobby. A while back, Daisy had gone off in search of coffee. In a chair near him, Phil had drifted off at least twice, arms crossed over his chest, while Fitz watched with a mild jealousy. In another room while Jemma endured labor, he waited helplessly on the side and things in the lobby were just boring. 

He looks into his phone instead, deleting redundant apps and clearing out old text messages. Scrolling through his with Jemma’s, he manages to lose himself for a moment until Daisy pops out of the woodwork and hands him a small styrofoam cup. 

“They didn’t have any tea, but since you drank all of my Italian blend last week, I thought you’d be alright with this.” 

He takes a too-big gulp and winces. Strong. Strong and predictably bitter.

“Did you bring some for me?” Phil asks, running a hand over his sleepy face and smiling when she hands him his own cup.

“How are they doing in there?” Fitz asks.

“Bold of you to suspect that I tried to sneak in,” Daisy teases with a cocked eyebrow. “And correct. They’re doing alright, I think. Sounds like it’s about time for the big show.” 

“How’s mom?” Phil asks in turn.

“Great.” 

They sit together, equilaterally from each other and sipping their drinks in silence. Nurses call the waiting patients in sequence until the room seems to clear. There are a few stragglers here and there, but the sun was coming up, and presumably, so was much of the staff. “Do you think I should have stayed with her?”

Daisy looks around her phone. “Doesn’t matter what I think. And didn’t she kick you out anyway?” 

“I think that no matter what, you would wonder.” Phil speaks from his quiet place against the wall, under a low-resolution photo of a waterfall. “But you’ve got a point about the baby not being your baby.”

Fitz shrugs. So the father doesn’t mind that he’d skipped out. 

Phil leaves his chair and approached with sleepy feet, sitting in the spot beside Fitz. “I should say thank you for helping to father him, though.” 

Fitz chokes on his next sip of coffee. “What--”

“I mean in the past month or so. All the effort that you’ve put into caring for Jemma while she mothered him.” Phil holds his open palms out. “She can do things that we can’t on our own, and she mothered him in her own way since the beginning. Eating the right foods, taking all of those shots.”

“Yeah, man, you did a lot of fathering in the last month.” Daisy chimes without looking up this time. 

Phil considers before answering. “Cooked a lot. Helped Jemma do those simple things like just putting on her coat when you two headed out.”

“She told me that you helped her tie her shoes the other day,” Daisy laughs. “I did that a lot, too. I’m glad you were around to take some of those shifts.” 

Fitz feels himself flush. True, he did do all those things, but it wasn’t to take care of the baby. It was to take care of her. He knows intellectually that she was carrying a baby, but aside from the nagging feeling that someone was watching them felt it like it was just her. The feeling of the child pressing a foot into his hip the night before, that was secondary. 

Phil nods at him, as if there was something he knew Fitz was keeping behind closed doors. “I just wanted to say thank you.” 

Time moves slowly while the three of them wait in the lobby, but Fitz knows that morning is also approaching and that soon, he will either have to phone Mr. Ryan and tell him that he can’t come in, or he would have to run home and change or else risk a stern talking to about tee-shirts in the workplace. Eventually, he just calls in, and after a brief argument, Mr. Ryan concedes. There is only so much he could say.

* * *

  
  


Steven Coulson is born in the afternoon, just past 1 o’clock. With bleary eyes, Jemma watches as a faceless medical professional passes the baby in slow motion to Aunt Melinda. Usually stoic, her face is already running, and Jemma feels like she just ran ten marathons in a row. He is impossible to glimpse from her place there on the bed, but he must be a piece of artwork to see, as nothing has ever made Melinda May cry that way. 

Shortly into the introduction, Uncle Phil trips into the room and Jemma eyes the open door hoping that someone else will follow.

* * *

  
  


“Good morning,” Fitz urges. 

Jemma is unsure how long she’d been asleep. “Is Steven here?” She blubbers, much in the same way that she had woken in the middle of the night.

“He is in the nursery, and everyone is staring at him, but I really just wanted to see you.” He sneaks a hip onto the bed and waits for her to sit up so he can move in beside her. “How are you?”

“Tired.” 

“I bet. I’m told that you did a great job and that everyone is very healthy.” 

“Good,” Jemma says with no commitment. She is interested only in going back to sleep and being cuddled.

Beside her, Fitz sits stiffly, as if there was something to watch out for. “You’ve done such a kind thing, Jemma.” 

She doesn’t answer. People don’t need to tell her anymore. 

“It’s your turn. I’m going to take care of you now.” He presses a kiss into her hairline, smelling the salt of sweat and agony that she remembered from just a little while ago. 

She drifts off again just a little while later, contemplating the way she could feel so empty and so full at the same time.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys liked this one! Chapter 10 will just be a short epilogue.


	10. Epilogue

##  Epilogue

Holding his wrist at a particular angle, so that his watch lights up and becomes responsive, Fitz holds Stevie on his lap in a delicate balancing act that has become very familiar. He watches as the baby grabs for his timepiece, with his fingers all thumbs and his grasp practiced. It’s a favorite past time of his, reaching for anything that lights up, and sometimes Fitz wonders if that’s because remembers Fitz’s loud geeking on one of the many occasions that he dragged pregnant Jemma into a electronics store.

Beside him, Daisy fidgets with her program, flipping through the pages again and probably trying to estimate how long it will take before they finally call Jemma’s name.

“It’s probably going to be a while since Simmons is near the very back of the alphabet,” he whispers while he peers into the rows of graduates with their black robes trimmed with a variety of colors and searches for hers, though everyone looks like ants from their seats near the very back of the stadium. It’s a thoughtful move, in case the applause becomes too much for the baby or he needs a quick change. 

“I should have brought a book or something,” she curses under her breath.

From his knee, he drops Stevie into her lap. “There you are: all the entertainment you need.” 

The hour or so of pointless name calling ekes by them, and there is a moment near the N’s that Phil nods off with his arms crossed over his chest. May leans against him and looks up at the stage every now and then, her attention mostly on the game of expert-level Sudoku that she’s been playing ever since the chancellor started on the D’s. 

There is amazingly a handful of Q’s. 

And finally, just there, on the edge of the side-stage Fitz can see Jemma, standing on her tiptoes with her wide mouth red with her morning lipstick.  _ A special occasion _ , Daisy had said while they stood together getting ready in the washroom in front of the big mirror while Fitz stood in the hallway waiting for his turn. She’s smiling so wide, and he lifts a hand to wave at her, even though he doubts she can see him from the back of the arena.

“Look!” Daisy prods Stevie’s chest and stood him up on her lap to see her too. “There’s Jemma!” 

He’s all smiles. Loves her more than yogurt, which is his second favorite mistress. 

When Jemma walks across, her pride is the color of a daffodil waking in the morning, the same color that flutters in through the curtain when he is waking up beside her in his bed. Fitz’s heart thrashes stubbornly against the wall of his chest as she smiles up at him from the stage down below, surrounded by other graduates that pull none of his attention. Stevie grasps his arm firmly with both of his hands. Around them, there is an acute standing ovation, and the cheers of the family around him are deafened by the pulse in his ears. Mum would have liked to be there, he knows. 

There’s something about Jemma that Mum must see in herself as well, as it’s a puzzle how the two of them became so close so quickly. On Wednesday, when the three of them began having weekly dinners at his Mum’s, he caught her doting on Jemma like she was her own daughter. Which was a very good sign. Ever since his dad had dropped off again without warning, they did more together. Had tea in the double-decker in the city. Went on gallery walks through the arts district. Parts of Fitz seemed to crawl back into him, things that had been sleeping before.

The ring box in the pocket of his coat seems to throb as well, tandem with the heartbeat he is sure must belong to someone else since he’s never felt it so insistent before. 

Daisy reaches for his hand and squeezes knowingly. “Don’t overthink it.” 

“I feel like I can’t think at all.” He admits with paced words. 

“Fitz,” May says with an insistent tongue from across her husband’s body, “She’s going to say yes. You have nothing to worry about.”

He gulps. He must seem nothing short of neurotic or they wouldn’t all be urging him on all of a sudden. 

“But if you are worried, it’s all right,” Phil whispers to him with his forehead wrinkled. “She’s going to love it. And she loves you, so I think it’s a safe bet.” 

* * *

  
  
  


Once the ceremony had concluded and all of them had made their remarks on Jemma’s brilliance and her certain future success, she tells Fitz that instead of going out to dinner, she would rather go home and put on her pyjamas and lie on the couch together. And that’s fine, he says. What this means is that his sweatpants will be unavailable as soon as she steps foot in his apartment and only that he’d made a reservation at a fancy restaurant that he would need to cancel and maybe he would have to come up with another plan for a proposal on the fly. Goddamnit. Fine. Okay. 

He’s right about the sweatpants and they remove their layers of formal clothing and Jemma slips under the couch-blanket with her red lipstick still on and she flicks on the television. 

Through the open bedroom door, he can see her moving closer to sleepiness, and there can be no blame there, since she has worked so diligently on her studies and can be done for the first moment. He slides the ring box into the bedside table drawer. Another night will be fine. 

“Tell me about the project you were doing at work,” she says when he sits down beside her on the sofa, and she begins to rub her hand through his hair. “I can’t remember all the details.” 

“It’s just a house start to finish.” 

“You were much more excited about it last week.” 

“I-Well, I put a lot of intense work into it for so long and maybe I just need to look at something else for a while and clear my head.” 

Jemma nods. “Would Jeff let you work on something else, do you think?”

He’s a thousand lightyears different from the old boss. Three months before, when Mr. Ryan sold the firm out of the blue to someone who he had never introduced to the office before, there had been panic. Fitz remembered sometimes the embarrassing way that he’d stopped eating and tossed and turned in his sleep, only to find out that Jeff was an easy man to work for. 

“Ah, well, we make mistakes, Fitz. I’ll clean this one up and you’ll know what to do next time.” He’d said just the first week. That line had carved itself into the forefront of Fitz’s brain and since then, he hadn’t made another one. 

“I’d bet.” 

Jemma leans against him, her hand now gone from his hair and instead wrapped around his waist. Her breathing slows and Fitz watches as her eyelids begin to flutter. She’s left on a documentary that he doesn’t want to watch, but it barely matters when she’s just there, perfectly strewn across the space where he is so used to surviving and just beginning to live. 

“Jemma, wake up,” he says softly, almost afraid that she will come to life herself, to come to her senses. 

“Yes,” she whispers in kind. “Do we need to go to bed?” she asks. 

“I-yes.” He falters. 

“I dreamed that we had a wedding,” she says with her sleep-gravel voice. 

Fitz stands on feet that have gone numb in an instant, and turns the screen off while pulling her to her feet beside him. “We did?” 

“It was beautiful. There were flowers all over the place.”

A deep breath. “Would you like that?” 

“Like it?” she questions with only half of her mind, the other half still resting on the sofa and very unconcerned with things like weddings and legal documents. 

He reaches for the switch on the lamp, almost ready to turn it off. 

“Hm, I suppose if that’s what you wanted too.” Jemma answers with a mindless grin. 

“I do want to.” 

“What?” She doesn’t have it. 

Fitz can’t believe that she doesn’t have it yet; the woman’s a genius. “I do want to have a wedding with you, with as many flowers as you like.”

“Leo?” She stumbles on her words again, but her eyes grow to the size of planets.

“Will you marry me, Jemma?” He rushes. The words leave him like rainwater cleaning a gutter, and the inside of him--it feels like it has been entirely washed new. 

For a moment, she tries to find herself but crumbles into his arms in smiling tears that pull threads of Fitz in all different directions. “As many flowers as I want?” She asks. 

“Of course,” he answers.

“Yes!” She pulls him into an embrace. 

Relief is the color yellow as well, he decides. How do all these things happen? He can’t find the words to phrase the question right. How has he gotten this far? His throat feels like it is standing on his tiptoes as he drags Jemma into the bed and reaches for the ring in the bedside drawer. She’s going to love it.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading, guys! I've really enjoyed the sense of community I've been witnessing around here. I don't have a tumblr or any other social media, but if there's any type of piece that you'd like to see, please drop me a comment and let me know. 
> 
> You're all the best.


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